Brain World Fall 2015

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THE SCIENCE OF CHARACTER:
USING BRAIN SCIENCE TO PROMOTE

STUDENT SELF-REGULATION,
RESILIENCE AND RESPECT
BOSTON, MA November 13-15, 2015
At The Westin Copley Place Hotel
Walter Mischel, PhD, Niven Professor of Humane Letters in Psychology, Columbia University;
Author, The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control (2015)
Fumiko Hoeft, MD, PhD, Director, Lab of Educational NeuroScience (BrainLENS); Associate
Professor, University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine
Roy F. Baumeister, PhD, Francis Eppes Professor of Psychology, Florida State University;
Co-Author, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength (2011)
Stephanie M. Jones, PhD, Associate Professor in Human Development and Urban Education
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and Regulated Learning Environments, Harvard Graduate School of Education
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Frontal Lobes
10
Four Surprising Ways to Increase Your Life Expectancy
11
Six Ways You Can Beat Winter Time Depression
12
Seven Tips on Healthy Living
Cover
MANY CULTURES
RECOGNIZE THE
IMPORTANCE OF GUT
HEALTH BUT RECENTLY
ITS ATTRACTED THE
ATTENTION OF THE
MEDICAL WORLD AS
WELL. SCIENTISTS ARE
NOW DISCOVERING
SCOVERING T
TH
THAT
THE GUT
UT MAY INFLUEN
INFLUENCE
OUR THINKIN
NG,
BEHAVIOR,
HAVIOR,
AVIOR, AND EV
EVEN
MENTAL
ENTAL
NTAL WELL-BEIN
WELL-BEING.
18
14
The Science of Love Addiction
18
Curing the Mind through the Gut
22
A Brief History of Wellness and the Brain
26 Yoga and its Eects on the Parasympathetic

Nervous System
30
The Transposed Mind: How Self-Aware Are We?
Health
34
Uncovering the Epidemic of Traumatic Brain

Injury
38
Ancient Eastern Medicine and the Brain
Science
contents
6 brainworldmagazine.com
42
Tunnel of Light: Making Sense of Near-Death

Experiences
FALL 2015
Brain in Focus
46
Understanding the Master Gland
Personality
50 Lucy Brown: the Neuroscience of
Romantic Love
Education
54
Neuroscience and Community

Outreach: A Personal Account
Global
56
How Neuroscientists Can Help Poverty
Business
58
Managing Work Stress
62
Couple Therapy by the Moschettas:

Self-Transcending Love
Resources
64
TV: Limitless Possibilities
66
Book Roundup
68
Creativity Comic
Events
70
Calendar of Brain-Related Events
The Last Word

72
Persevering Through Hardship
Fall 2015
letter from
the publisher
While we think of the mind and body as dierent places, the two are actually much more connected than we often realize. In fact, our bodily sense of wellness has a great deal to do with the
brain. If youre feeling sick, the malady seems to permeate through everything, making it nearly
impossible to be yourself even something as simple as a change in seasons or amount of available daylight can easily aect your mood and overall sense of well-being, though not irreversibly.
As weve often heard, its easy to make yourself sick, agonizing over a project or worrying about
test results, but to make ourselves well may not necessarily be so hard to accomplish. We spend
a great deal of time worrying about illnesses, sometimes to such a degree that we imagine we
actually have them, but meditation has long been regarded as an important restorative practice,
revered throughout the centuries by a number of cultures for its ability to renew the body with
positive thought. Despite being regarded as an alternative medicine, modern physicians are
starting to see its benets. In fact, the brains powerhouse, the hypothalamus, is where chemicals
that generate our moods and regulate our health are created and released into the bloodstream
interestingly, a pea-sized region called the pituitary gland is responsible for most of them. While
many holistic therapies seem to be focused on the
individual, this interest hardly needs to stop there.
As modern science repeatedly demonstrates, humans are social beings who depend on each other
for help and support, and as such constantly seek
social interaction. Rather than solely reflecting
on how we can improve our own wellness, the
reward for helping others seems to be much more
benecial in the long run we know how good
we feel when were fully functional, so why not do
what we can to spread this? Relationships can heal,
they can improve the workplace and encourage us
to work together in an eort of making our communities better through realizing our full potential
as human beings. It is our sincere hope that you
enjoy this issue of Brain World.
BrainWorld Fall 2015
Publisher
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ife expectancies of average Americans have reached

unprecedented highs, according to a report by the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most of
us are capable of living past their 79th birthday. While this
sounds promising, we shouldnt just assume that longevity will
continue to rise innitely throughout the future. A great deal
of how long we live depends on how we take care of ourselves.
1. Drink less milk, but eat more cheese: We might have been
raised to believe that milk does a body good, but studies show that excessive milk consumption may not be such a good thing. A collection of
Swedish studies published in the British Medical Journal found that milk
intake was correlated with higher rates of mortality and a greater likelihood of bone fractures. This may be due to the presence of a compound
known as D-galactose in milk, something associated with natural aging
in animals, with eects like shortened life spans, chronic inammation,
neurodegeneration, decreased immune response, and gene transcriptional
changes. However, the potential risk posed by milk isnt true for all dairy
products, such as cheese and yogurt. In fact, high intake of fermented
milk products lowers the risk of cardiovascular diseases. In order to meet
your daily calcium requirements, you need only look to sources like green
leafy vegetables.
2. Reduce or eliminate meat consumption: Its certainly a
dicult feat, especially when things like fried chicken exist in the world,
but eating a vegetarian, or mostly vegetarian, diet does oer some protective health benets. A vegetarian diet is associated with lower rates of
obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and even certain cancers. If
you must eat meat, try to avoid animals that are factory-farmed, as these
products are more likely to contain E. coli, salmonella, campylobacter, as
well as additives like antibiotics and growth hormones.
3. Adopt a pet: According to The Atlantic, People with pets enjoy

superior self-esteem, while suering less depression due to an optimistic
mindset that companionship with animals engenders. Improved mental
health means improved physical health and longevity. Owning a dog in
particular can be advantageous to ones health, as they require daily walks:
Dog owners worldwide enjoy longer lifespans on average. Positive health
attributes dogs afford remain a constant for young and elderly alike,
including weight maintenance, reduced blood pressure, and improved
cardiovascular tness.
ON
LIVING
WELL
By Betty R. Vine
FOUR SURPRISING WAYS TO INCREASE

YOUR LIFE EXPECTANCY
4. Throw away your TV: I never believed my parents warnings

that my brain would turn into mush from watching too many cartoons.
However, new research suggests they may have been onto something. The
Australian Diabetes, Obesity, and Lifestyle Study revealed some shocking
data even more jaw-dropping than the Orange Is the New Black
nale. Gretchen Reynolds of The New York Times explains the results:
Every single hour of television watched after the age of 25 reduces the
viewers life expectancy by 21.8 minutes. By comparison, smoking a single
cigarette reduces life expectancy by about 11 minutes. Looking more
broadly, an adult who spends an average of six hours a day watching TV
throughout their lifetime can expect to live 4.8 years less than a person
who does not watch TV. These results hold true, the authors point out,
even for people who exercise regularly.
Perhaps at rst glance, these tips sound like a recipe for a dull existence.
However, the increased health and vitality that come with a vegetarian
diet, the unconditionally loyal companionship of a pet, and the added
hours for intellectual and spiritual pursuits that will result from turning
o the TV, can all help you create not only a life with more years, but years
with more life.
Frontal
Lobes
SIX WAYS YOU CAN BEAT WINTERTIME DEPRESSION
By Earl Meagan
While the extra sleep you get from setting your
clocks back an hour might be nice, there are a few
reasons that this time of year may not agree with
everyone. You might find yourself a bit irritated at
having to wake up on cold, dark mornings, while
the few hours of sunlight are only out when youre
trapped inside at work. Up to 20 percent of people
across the globe suffer annually from some form of
seasonal affective disorder better known by the
acronym SAD during the fall and winter months.
Fortunately, feeling down during these seasons is
for the most part manageable. Here are a few ways
to stay upbeat until spring:
1.
4.
2.
5.
Get a good nights sleep: This one may seem

obvious, but this can go a long way in keeping
SAD away. When we sleep we produce a brain chemical called melatonin, a hormone which is critical in
maintaining a normal daily routine. Try to be consistently going to sleep at the same time every night
losing just 38 minutes of sleep can make a big
difference in the way your body produces melatonin.
Exercise can make a difference: While you

may feel less motivation for working out,
make sure you get plenty of exercise through the
darker months beyond the inevitable raking of
leaves or snow shoveling. Its ideal to get your exercise outdoors and to keep moving, as workouts
allow the brain to produce dopamine as a reward
chemical. If its too cold, the gym might be more
desirable but try to stay near an open window
with plenty of light.
Rearrange your lighting: Researchers suspect that those with SAD may be less light
sensitive than most people reacting to artificial
light in a different way than to sunlight, and their
bodies dont perceive the day changes during winter. You might want to rearrange your furniture
or even bed to have it in closer proximity of the
available sunlight, so that you can take in greater
amounts of light when the sun rises and sets.
Maintain a schedule: In addition to keeping regular bedtime hours, try to organize

as much of your day as possible, to help reduce
anxiety, which will help keep you as productive as
possible throughout the day. Also, keep track of
your mealtimes, as many people with seasonal depression tend to eat more carbohydrates and gain
weight during the winter months.
3.
6.
Eat more fish: Those most vulnerable to seasonal changes tend to live further away from
the equator with Alaska and Canada reporting
high numbers of SAD. However, fish rich in omega-3
amino acids could make a difference. Researchers
noted that northern countries, where fish are a
dietary staple such as Japan and Iceland had
significantly lower rates of seasonal depression
than expected.
Travel: This seems like a tall order but

seasonal depression may be an evolutionary
leftover from the days when humans were always
on the move. Even a change of scenery for a short
time can make a difference when battling winteronset depression. If you need to, try to hold onto a
few vacation days from work for some quick traveling or sightseeing at a sunnier location during the
cold months.
Fall 2015
live well, feel well

seven tips on healthy living
By David Driscoll
With the oncoming flu season and lots of inevitable time spent
indoors, fall and winter arent for everyone. Whether youre managing seasonal allergies, recovering from an illness, or just looking
to strengthen your immune system so you dont get sick next winter, here are seven simple things you can start doing today to make
yourself healthier, happier, and more resilient.
1. SLEEP ENOUGH, AND WELL: First,
check your sleep habits. Do you sleep
enough? Hows the quality of your sleep? If
your sleep schedule is irregular or if youre
getting to bed too late, you may not be getting the rest you need even though youre
getting enough hours. Whenever possible,
go to bed before midnight and have some
quiet time before you sleep. Eating too
late or overstraining your eyes at night
are habits that can negatively affect the
quality of your sleep. Try five minutes of
deep breathing or gentle leg shaking to
relax your system if you have difficulty
falling asleep.
Frontal
Lobes
2. TAKE CARE OF YOUR SPINE: Any and

all messages between the body and the
brain travel through the spine. And, as you
might know from your own experience,
the spine can become stiff and blocked by
things like too much time spent sitting at a
computer, or straining a muscle by slipping
in the bathtub. Over time, blockages in the
spine lead to imbalances and potential illnesses, with symptoms too numerous to
list. In order to release blockages in your
spine, try these exercises: Stand with your
knees bent, gently twisting your upper
body left and right from the waist,
30 to 50 times, feeling the back muscles
squeeze and stretch; or, lie down, hug your
knees and try rolling side to side or up
and down gently on your back while exhaling through the mouth, doing this daily
on a carpet or soft floor, 20 to 30 times.
These routines will gradually improve the
flexibility and circulation in your spine.
3. PRACTICE PROPER BREATHING:

Most people know that breathing is relaxing. But did you know it also activates a
whole range of healing processes in the
body? Here are just a few: it cleans out
toxins, improves blood circulation and
digestion, and reduces joint pain and
inflammation. When youre worn down,
deep breathing can help you recharge.
Also, the depth of your breath during the
day affects how deeply you breathe when
youre asleep. If your breathing muscles
are underdeveloped when youre awake,
they wont magically become stronger
while youre asleep. If you wake up often or
suffer from sleep apnea at night, try these
exercises: Before bed, breathe in through
your nose and out through your mouth
very comfortably, at least 20 times, focusing on feeling the chest rise and fall doing
this, pay particular attention to the feeling
of your chest emptying out and softening
as you exhale.
LONGTIME MEDITATION
PRACTITIONERS, LIKE BUDDHIST
MONKS, HAVE BEEN FOUND
TO ACTIVATE MORE OF THEIR
BRAINS AND HAVE HIGHER
GAMMA WAVE ACTIVITY THAN
OTHER HEALTHY PEOPLE.
4. MEDITATE: Brainwaves play important roles in maintaining a healthy and positive consciousness. Higher-frequency brainwaves are typically associated with learning
and organizing information, lower-frequency ones with
relaxation and healing. Meditation has been shown to
activate a wider range of brainwaves and proven to help
individuals recover a more natural balance, especially if
they have been subjected to prolonged stress or illness.
Longtime meditation practitioners, like Buddhist monks,
have been found to activate more of their brains and have
higher gamma wave activity than other healthy people.
Try your own meditation after doing some gentle exercises, deep breathing, or easy dancing.
5. LAUGH: For most people, its common sense it feels
good to laugh. But do you laugh enough? Research has
found that laughter is a powerful muscle relaxant, that
it decreases stress hormones and increases immune
cells and antibodies, as well as releases endorphins and
improves circulation. See if you can make yourself laugh
intentionally. Start with a fake laugh, focus on the feeling of the laughter becoming more authentic, and as you
keep saying Ha, ha, ha, you may find yourself genuinely
beginning to laugh. This works especially well with a good
friend. You might not want to do it in a public place, unless
of course you can get everyone to join in!
6. DO VOLUNTEER WORK: Doing volunteer or charity
work, or engaging in any kind of effort that aims to help
others, is a great thing. The world needs more people
taking action for the common good. But theres another
reason to help out it makes you healthier. Studies at
various charities have shown that doing volunteer work
can improve your health and happiness. Surprisingly, the
people doing the giving often benefit more than the ones
receiving it. Perhaps theres some truth to the old saying,
Its better to give than to receive.
7. DEVELOP A SPIRITUAL PRACTICE: Believing in something bigger whether through organized religion, or
not has been shown to positively affect ones health and
well-being. When done in a community, spiritual practice
provides a kind of support and peace of mind that goes
beyond mere thoughts and emotions. If youre beginning
your own spiritual practice, dont be discouraged if it at
first feels awkward or forced. Like with anything else,
spirituality too sometimes requires practice. That doesnt
make it any less authentic. Practice your spirituality like
you would practice music learn some basics, find a
teacher and a group to play with, and develop your own
particular sense of rhythm and harmony. Most importantly,
have fun!
is giving me the
Bastyr
tools to build a career
that balances research
and seeing patients.
Joshua Goldenberg, ND (2013)
Create a
Healthier World
Degrees Include:
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Fall 2015
COVER
THE SCIENCE OF LOVE ADDICTION
By Lauren Migliore
Yes, it sounds
ridiculous, but
love addiction
is a thing, and
it can be as
destructive,
at least
emotionally,
as substance
abuse.
Have you ever stayed in a bad relationship or repeatedly

returned to an ex even when you knew it wasnt a good idea?
When youre in a committed relationship do you wonder if
youve chosen the right one? Have you ever fantasized about
someone from your past, thinking you should have kept
them around? If you answered yes to any of the above, you
just might be addicted to love.
It may sound ridiculous, but love addiction is a thing, and
it can be as destructive, at least emotionally, as substance
abuse. Love addicts enter each relationship with desperate
hopes and constant fears that may eventually lead to their
downfall. Fearing rejection, pain, and having little faith in
their ability to receive love, they wait and wish for love, yet
when they have it, they sabotage it.
The causes of love addiction are fairly easy to identify: low
self-esteem, absence of positive role models for committed
relationships, and obsession with the happily ever after.
But neuroscience is beginning to oer considerable evidence
that while love addiction stems from past experiences, its
also rooted deep in the brain, and more specically, its the
result of the brains reward circuitry.
Anyone that has ever fallen in
love knows the feeling sleeplessness, loss of appetite, the feeling
of euphoria, and the willingness
to take risks that you wouldnt
normally consider. Its an experience of feeling high not unlike the
eect induced by narcotics, and its
mighty addictive.
Romantic love is an addiction,
says Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist at Rutgers University.
My guess is that our modern addictions nicotine, drugs, sex,
gambling are simply hijacking
this ancient brain pathway that

evolved millions of years ago, that
evolved for romantic love. The
brain system evolved to focus your
energy on an individual and start
the mating process.
Coincidently, people in the early
throes of love have brain activity
identical to that of a drug addict
in need of a fix. Its involuntary.
The brains fear alert system (the
amygdala) along with our judgment and reasoning system (the
anterior cingulate cortex and prefrontal cortex) are nearly muted
while the neurotransmitter dopamine (the pleasure chemical)
floods the brains pleasure and
reward centers. Whats more, brain
circuits associated with states of
obsession, mania, and recklessness
also become activated. Interestingly, amphetamines, cocaine, and
opiates like heroin, morphine, and
OxyContin, trigger these same
neural circuits.
When that rush of dopamine

is released and the reward circuit
of the brain is triggered, our brain
res a message to our consciousness
saying, Pay attention to whats
happening and start craving this
experience because its important.
And therein lies the reason we love
the excitement and newness of
blossoming relationships. The rst
kiss, cuddling, sex, or even just a
mere touch is more exciting during
the infatuation stages of relationships because the brain recognizes
it as reward. As the relationship
continues, love addicts need more
and more armation to keep the
high going, not unlike substance
abuse users. When the relationship
ends, the effects are no different
than those felt during a drug withdrawal.
Nobody gets out of love alive,
Fisher says. You turn into a menace or a pest when youve been
rejected. Thats when people stalk
or commit suicide. Theres a very
powerful brain system that has a
dramatic eect on your entire life.
To test this, Fisher recruited
15 college-aged heterosexual men
and women still going through the
pain of a recent breakup. On average, the participants had separated
about two months prior to the
study, and all of them said they
were still in love. Each participant
was given pictures of their ex lover
while researchers used functional
MRI to take a closer look at the
behavior of their brains. The parts
of their brain that bustled with
activity were the same ones associated with cocaine and nicotine addiction, physical pain and distress,
and attachment.
You just crave this person.

Youre willing to do crazy things,
stupid things, Fisher says. Just as
like someone ghting a drug addiction, a lovelorn individual obsesses
over their loss, craves the other
person, and in this craze distorts reality. This in turn arouses desires to
repair the broken relationship and
repent for past mistakes, as well as
a willingness to tolerate anything
to re-connect with the lost partner.
The second that you see or hear
from the ex lover again, this incites
hope and your brain automatically
recognizes it as a reward dopamine is replenished, the high is
back, and our better judgment is
suppressed.
Similarly, love addicts who are
in committed relationships experience these same feelings. According to Suzanne Phillips, a licensed
psychologist specializing in love
addiction, love addicts tend to obsess over maintaining the connection, approval, or even fantasized
attachment to a partner. These
relationships are built on rigid
and demanding versions of the
other person, but unfortunately,
the ability to trust is absent. Instead, theres an inability to hold
on to positive feelings about oneself or about the love of the partner.
Often anxiety is colored by jealousy and paranoid fears. A good
evening, or even a great vacation,
never holds. It always just ends up
being a temporary x for negative
feelings of insecurity, despair, and
fear of abandonment. In turn, the
relationship is a cycle of euphoria,
depression, and self-sabotage
the love addict denies reality and
endlessly searches for a flicker of
the early magic while tolerating
anything to get it. The constant
and insistent demands for reassurance ultimately ignite rejection,
rage, and threaten to disconnect
the suerer from their partner.
Healthy relationships are the
opposite. Couples go from the
euphoria of the infatuation stage to
a loving commitment, understanding, and acceptance of the other
faults and all.
WHAT STOPS ADDICTIVE

RELATIONSHIPS?
Knowing why the brain does what

it does during love addiction cannot change the unconscious drive
of wanting to attach, at all costs
but it does help. If it really is
an addiction, it has to be treated
as one. And thats usually a matter
of spending time and space away
from whats causing the addiction.
According to Fisher, the age-old
adage that as time goes on, the
pain fades away is spot on, and
theres scientific evidence to support it. Time does heal, Fisher
says, explaining that as more time
passed, activity in the parts of the
brain associated with attachment
and addiction decreased. People
have always said time heals and
weve proven it.
The point is this: The drive to
fall in love will always be hovering
in the background. Being in love,
however, is an incredibly elusive
thing, and its ultimate success depends on more than the sporadic,
euphoric rush. It requires emotionally healthy individuals. As a relationship progresses and the process
unfolds, the brain needs less of the
pleasure chemicals to spark the
reward circuitry. Love evolves into
a constant, emotional bond, one
that is impervious to temporary
highs and lows. We may not strike
gold on the rst, second, or even
the 17th attempt and thats OK,
because somewhere between time
and experience, devastation and
despair, well gure things out.
Neuroscience
is beginning
to offer
considerable
evidence that
while love
addiction
stems from
past experiences,
its also rooted
deep in the
brain, and
more specifically,
its the result
of the reward
circuitry in
the brain.
Fall 2015
COVER
The fearful
mice were
transformed
into more
adventurous
creatures, while
the bold mice
grew anxious
after getting
microbes from
the timid mice.
Many cultures recognize the importance of gut

health but recently its attracted the attention of the
medical world as well. Scientists are now discovering
that the gut may inuence our thinking, behavior, and
even mental well-being. The state of our insides could
in fact shape the way we interact with the outside world.
GATEWAY TO THE BRAIN?
The gastrointestinal tract contains

about 500 million neurons, as
many as are in the spinal cord.
Called the second brain by Michael Gershon, M.D., the GI tract
houses the enteric nervous system. The ENS contains many of
the same neurotransmitters as the
brain, including 95 percent of
serotonin, the feel good neurotransmitter, as well as neurons
and proteins. The gut has a mind of
its own, and it may be as powerful
as the one in your head.
Linking the central nervous system and the ENS is the vagus
(wandering) nerve, a two-way
street between the brain and abdomen. Most signals do not travel
from the head to the gut, but from
the gut to the head. About 90 percent of messages are conveyed from
the vagal receptors to the CNS.
The gut also contains 70 percent of
immune cells, along with various
chemicals and microbes.
Many inflammatory disorders

have been linked to changes in
the gut ecosystem, or microbiome
(the 100 trillion bugs living on
our skin, in our mouths, gut, and
elsewhere on our bodies). Gut
bacteria are essential to our immunity, aid digestion, support
metabolism, and ward o harmful
invaders. Stress, pollution, and
processed food can upset the bacterial balance, causing the immune
system to release chemicals that
trigger inammation and can lead
to disease. If communication is
bidirectional, stress-related changes
to the microbiome may aect brain
function and behavior.
This raises the possibility that
adding good bacteria could restore gut harmony and mental
well-being. A new class of probiotics could be used to address
neurodevelopmental, behavioral,
and perhaps even neurodegenerative disorders, says Sarkis Mazmanian, Ph.D., a microbiologist at the
California Institute of Technology.
UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF BUGS
Everyone is born with a pristine

gut. Colonization during birth and
shortly afterward helps program
ones responses to stress, and may
even inuence a persons behavior.
In 2004, Nobuyuki Sudo, Ph.D.,
and colleagues at Kyushu University
in Japan discovered that introducing bacteria to mice with a sterile
gut altered brain chemistry and
behavior. They found that germ-free
mice were more anxious. Adding
the probiotic Bifidobacterium to
their gut ora had calming eects
on the mice and lowered corticosterone (the stress hormone) levels.
Over the next 10 years, scientists

uncovered further evidence of the
interplay between the brain and gut.
Mazmanian shifted his earlier focus
from immunity to how intestinal
bacteria interact with the brain.
Gut microbes were communicating with the nervous system and
potentially with the brain itself, he
says. In a 2013 study, Mazmanian
and neuroscientist Elaine Hsiao
investigated behavior in mice that
were bred to exhibit symptoms of
autism. Altering bacterial composition reduced gut permeability and
caused noticeably profound changes
in the behavior of mice that were
inuenced by the microbiome.
At McMaster University in Ontario, the gastroenterologist Premysl Bercik, M.D., found that
harmful bacteria can increase anxiety while beneficial bacteria can
reduce it. In one study, Bercik and
colleagues replaced the gut bacteria
in a timid strain of germ-free mice
with microbes from fearless mice.
Resultantly, the fearful mice were
transformed into more adventurous creatures, while the bold mice
grew anxious after getting microbes from the timid mice.
Yet, how the gut talks to the
brain remains largely uncertain.
Scientists at the University College
Cork, Ireland, severed the vagus
nerve in mice before giving them
probiotics. The mice had lower
anxiety levels but only if the
vagus nerve was intact. The results
suggest its importance, but stop
short of explaining how bacteria
actually inuences the brain.
The endocrinologist Mark Lyte,
Ph.D., suggested that gut microbes
speak to the brain using their own
neurotransmitters. Gut bacteria
produce and respond to the same
chemicals the brain uses to govern
mood (e.g., serotonin, dopamine,
and GABA). Presumably, the brain
might monitor and react to
gut feelings in order to control outside inuences. Probiotics
may alleviate anxiety by producing
anti-inammatory molecules, such
as serotonin, or reducing activity of the hypothalamic-pituitaryadrenal axis, a set of organs whose
interaction helps regulate stress.
TREATING THE GUT

TO TREAT THE BRAIN
The benecial eects of prebiotics

and probiotics on digestive health
in humans are well known. However, there are not too many studies
on how they aect the brain.
One research team, led by the
neuroscientist Philip Burnet,
Ph.D., at the University of Oxford,
tested the eects of prebiotics on
anxiety in 45 healthy adults. Prebiotics are carbohydrates (fibers)
that feed benecial bacteria already
found in the gut. Participants received either a prebiotic supplement or placebo every day for three
weeks. The results were recently
published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.
People who are depressed tend
to focus on negative information,
says Burnet. To test emotional processing, the researchers performed
several computerized assessments,
such as eliciting responses to positive and negative words. After using prebiotics people focused more
on positive stimuli than negative
information, says Burnet. Saliva
cortisol levels were also lower in the
prebiotic group than in controls,
indicating diminished anxiety.
The reduction in anxiety is likely
due to the anti-inflammatory effects of gut bacteria, according to
Burnet. The gut responds to stress
or infection by releasing inammatory cytokines, these in eect disturb brain chemistry and increase
susceptibility to anxiety or depression. Prebiotics may increase bacterial diversity, which alters the gut
ecosystem and helps put out the
re. The results suggest prebiotics
could work on mechanisms that
aect mental health, Burnet says.
A recent study, led by psychologist Laura Steenbergen from the
Leiden Institute of Brain and
Cognition in the Netherlands,
investigated the potential effects
of probiotics on depression. For
four weeks, 40 healthy participants received either a multistrain
probiotic or placebo. The results
appeared in the April 2015 issue
of Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.
Rumination is one of the most
predictive vulnerability markers of
depression, said Steenbergen in a
statement. Persistent ruminative
thoughts often precede and predict
The results
suggest prebiotics
could work on
mechanisms
that affect
mental health.
episodes of depression. At the end
of the study, the probiotic users
had fewer negative thoughts than
the placebo group, suggesting that
benecial bacteria have the power
to brighten up a dark mood.
Probiotics have also been linked
to activation of certain brain areas.
A 2013 study by Kirsten Tillisch,
M.D., and colleagues used functional MRI to measure changes in
resting brain activity and emotionrecognition. They gave 36 healthy
women probiotics twice daily for
four weeks. Twelve consumed a
probiotic yogurt, 11 had a nonprobiotic yogurt, and 13 received
no intervention. The fMRI results showed that probiotics led
to reduced reactivity in the brain
regions associated with anxiety (including the insula and somatosensory cortex) in response to images
of angry or frightened faces. Their
research was an important step in
demonstrating the inuence of gut
health on brain circuitry.
Perhaps one day a drug remedying the gut could treat the brain?
Most scientists agree its too soon to
tell. Probiotics and prebiotics oer
a natural option without the side
eects of drugs that target the brain,
but it is unlikely that they will replace traditional therapies, cautions Burnet. They could improve
brain function overall, and therefore
improve the response to a drug in
treatment-resistant patients.
Fall 2015
On
Feeling
Well
A Brief History
of Wellness
and the Brain
By Nicole Dean
continued on next page
COVER
Did you know you might be living

in the golden age of brain science?
Our understanding of the human
brain is expanding so rapidly that
some scientists are calling it such. Yet,
there is so much to discover that others liken the brain to a vast, unknown
frontier. One thing is known for sure,
though to understand the brain is
to understand ourselves.
But for much of human history, the
brain was not held in such high regard.
The ancient Egyptians, when preparing bodies for mummication, would
discard the brain while preserving the
organs deemed more important for
ones journey into the afterlife, like the
heart, lungs, and liver. In some of the
most ancient medical texts, the functions of the mind are usually assigned
to the heart, not to the brain. The brain
was dismissed as mere cranial stung.
Today, even primary school kids
have some idea about the brain and
its function that its a gray, wrinkly
thing we use to think. And few people
would dismiss its importance. For
us, to lose our brains functions is to
lose ourselves, and we thus dread the
thought of dementia or brain injury,
placing these among the worst of all
possible fates. We now know that the
brain is not just important, but is the
very mediator of wellness. The health
of the body can no longer be separated
from the health of the brain, and the
health of the brain cannot be separated
from the health of the body.
On Feeling Well contd

The transition of how we gradually came to view the brain so differently parallels the story of how
people have related to health and
wellness in general. Like so much
else in human cultures, perceptions
of what it means to be healthy
have varied drastically throughout
the past. Yet, these views can be
generalized into two basic perspectives holistic and mechanistic.
For much of human history, the
conception of health has been holistic focusing on the totality of
the human being, rather than looking for the root cause of an illness
within a particular organ or bodily
function. In tribal societies, to this
day, when someone is sick, no distinctions are made between body,
mind, and spirit. An illness represents a disruption in the proper
natural balance of things, and the
individual is likely to be brought
back into balance through the
use of herbs, spiritual rituals, and
energetic purification. Maintaining health, therefore, is a matter of
understanding ones relationship to
the whole to the whole of ones
tribe, to the whole of the earth, and
to the whole of ones own being.
The mechanistic point of view,
which rose to prominence in the
Western world along with industrialism, perceives the body as a
machine. Symptoms of diseases are
singled out for direct treatment, and
the causes underlying the disorders
are assigned to malfunctioning processes in the body. This viewpoint,
at least at first glance, seems the
most scientific isolating and
quantifying everything according to
its separate form and function.
For those of us growing up in

the Western world, this viewpoint
now seems normal, even traditional. Yet, the holistic view (the
truly traditional one of the two)
has persisted, leading to a kind of
intellectual battle between those
who advocate a holistic approach
to health and those who prefer
the mechanistic one. In the 20th
century especially, attempts were
made by the medical establishment
which advocates the management of symptoms through pharmaceuticals and other scientically
interest in Eastern perspectives.

The Eastern take on medicine is
essentially a highly developed, holistic view of human health. There
are many variations of Eastern
medicine in different Asian cultures, but they are all united by the
idea of life energy, known as qi.
This vital life energy is an invisible
source of power that runs through
our bodies and ties our health to
our mind and spirit. As such, there
is no concrete separation between
mind, body, and soul. Rather than
having been discovered through
Maintaining health, therefore, is

a matter of understanding ones
relationship to the whole to the
whole of ones tribe, to the whole
of the earth, and to the whole
of ones own being.
validated treatments to limit the
practice of more holistic approaches to health, such as naturopathy.
In the 21st century, our healthcare
professionals have arrived at something of an uncomfortable truce.
Medical doctors admit to the value
of chiropractic with varying degrees
of enthusiasm and/or skepticism,
while celebrity advocates of alternative medicine, like Dr. Andrew
Weil and Dr. Mehmet Oz, receive
only occasional derision from the
American Medical Association.
Part of the reason for this reluctant acceptance is simple. Were
living in a small world these days.
While a mechanistic view may
continue to be the preferred Western approach, the lines between
East and West are no longer as denite as they once were. What was
50 years ago part of the far out
counterculture of the beatniks and
hippies yoga, chakra balancing,
medicinal herbs, acupuncture,
and the like has become much
more mainstream. In fact, the word
wellness, which connotes a more
holistic approach to human health,
was not at all common in English
usage before the 1950s. At that
point, its use increased exponentially, right alongside the soaring
scientic inquiry, the Eastern traditional approach has evolved over

thousands of years of observation,
trial, and error. Science, however,
has conrmed the ecacy of some
of its practices, such as acupuncture along with certain Chinese
medicinal herbs. They dont know
how all of it works, but they cant
deny that it is eective at least
some of the time.
But what does all of this have to
do with the brain? Well, the brain
is where holistic and mechanistic
views converge. Since all other
bodily functions are dependent on
the brain, the brain is the single
uniting organ an individual part
which is the ultimate unier of all
bodily processes, and the apparent
seat of consciousness as well. Previously, Western scientists separated
the mind from the body into the
dualistic Cartesian split. But the
study of the brain will not support
such a false dichotomy. Without a
shadow of a doubt, neuroscientists
know that the mind inuences the

physical functioning of the brain
and vice versa they can see it
right there on the CT scans. And
what is the most basic functional
element of the brain, the substance
that jumps a million times from
synapse to synapse every time we
form a thought? Thats right
good old bioelectricity. There it is,
energy perhaps a conrmation
of the qi life force running along a
meridian system.
In discovering what is good for
the brain, we are nding out what
is good for the body and the spirit.
In studying the effects of stress
on the brain and body, for example, it has been impossible to
separate the processes of our mind
from the health of our bodies. And
some of the best, scientically conrmed remedies for our stressedout brains and bodies have come
straight from spiritual practices,
as in the case of meditation and
yoga, ones which have proven effective for treating issues like posttraumatic stress.
In the future, neuroscience will
likely answer questions that we
thought science could not answer,
questions once thought better left
to philosophers and gurus. What
will we learn about ourselves in
our quest for total wellness? When
neuroscientists gure out whats really going on between our synapses
on the quantum level? What will
science tell us about how these
energies interact with the energies
that physicists tell us our entire
universe is made out of? Will the
gurus be saying, I told you so, or
will science tell a dierent story entirely? Only time will tell, and what
exciting times those will be.
WORLD 7,(*,
LEADERSHIP PROGRAM
Brain Education in the United Nations
What if a critical mass of people...
1. woke up their bodies and brains?
2. learned to live in a way that creates health, happiness and peace for
themselves and those around them?
3. centered their daily lives and choices in solving the problems of humanity
and the earth?
IBREA believes that the world would fundamentally change
DO YOU WANT TO BE ONE OF THEM?

You can start by doing our World Youth Leadership (WYL) Program!
Join an international group of young people from the US, Korea, Japan, Europe, Latin
America and Africa in an experience that will transform your view of yourself and the world
Contact info@ibrea.org or call 2123190848 for more information
TH
COVER
SS
URE FOR STRE

EC
How is yoga
so effective? It
reduces and
balances out the
levels of cortisol
in our bodies,
a hormone
that fuels our
split-second
stress reactions.
In turn, this
dampens the
bodys response to
stress.
Its time. I grab my mat, walk into the dimly lit studio,
and nd a place in the back. The instructor turns on soft
background music reminiscent of a mountain retreat, and
the class begins. We start out kneeling on our mats in the
resting childs pose, with our head down and arms stretched
out in front. Deep breath in, and slow exhale. I can totally
do this, I think to myself.
And in no time at all, I let my mind begin to wander. Its
warm in here. Are all of these people regulars? Can they tell
Ive never done yoga before? I should get new yoga pants.
I wonder if those expensive workout brands are worth the
price. At least theyd make me look like Im a regular. Did I
turn my phone o? I hope. Did I lock my car? What time
is tomorrows meeting? I still have to edit that report for the
meeting. Have I really only been here for two minutes? Im
hungry. I hope my stomach doesnt start growling. I dont
know what to make for dinner. A salad? But then Ill have to
stop at the store. What else could I make? Take-out? I really
need to nish that report. What if my boss hates it and I lose
my job, and, seriously, how have I only been in here for two
minutes and 47 seconds?
Ive always really wanted to like
yoga. And with its growing popularity, there are at least seven yoga
studios within a five-mile radius
of me. I have no excuses. Unfortunately, its never held my interest
much. Wheres the fast-paced circuit training? The loud music? The
squats, sprints, and supersets? Yoga
feels slow and it requires patience.
And Im not the patient type. Im
a Type A.
But Im here for a reason. Over
the past decade, there have been
countless reports linking various
personality traits nervousness,
anxiety, impatience, as well as those
labeled as Type A behaviors to
heart disease, in both men and
women alike. Given that heart disease runs in my family, and Im not
growing younger, its time I learn
how to relax and manage my stress.
Heres how it works: Every

single time you are hassled, irritated, worried, anxious, impatient, threatened, injured, upset,
or stressed, your sympathetic nervous system revs up. Wait the
sympathetic what?
The SNS, put simply, manages
our fight-or-flight response and
prepares the body for action. It has
evolved to keep us safe from predators and threats. When the SNS is
active, your blood pressure increases, your heart beats faster, digestion
slows down, and you experience a
surge of adrenaline all ideal for
helping you escape danger.
The problem lies in the fact
that in todays world, we use this
survival mechanism less to flee
from predators and more to ght
off rush-hour traffic, meet work
deadlines, stay alert during meetings, and endure the frantic ticking
of the clock. As a result, our SNS
stays on overdrive as we put our
body under constant stress for
reasons that are hardly life-threatening. What is life-threatening is
our cardiovascular health that were
putting at risk.
According to the American Journal of Epidemiology, Continuing

to over-activate the sympathetic
nervous system increases the threat
of heart attacks, heart rhythm
disturbances and sudden cardiac
deaths. This is especially true for
people who experience an exaggerated heart rate and blood pressure
in response to stress. You know the
kind its the quick-tempered
hotheads. During stressful situations, overstimulation of the SNS
causes blood vessels to constrict
too much, too little, or too often,
leading to elevated blood pressure
and cardiovascular damage.
To c o u n t e r a c t t h i s , w er e
equipped with the parasympathetic nervous system. Its commonly known as the bodys repair
system, stepping in when necessary
to help calm things down. It relaxes
muscles, improves blood ow and
oxygen delivery, and stabilizes the
body into a quieter, less stressful
state. The more time the body
spends with the PNS activated, the
easier it is to feel rested and relaxed.
These periods of calmness help balance your nervous system and keep
your entire body, including your
heart, in a healthier state.
However, the obstacle in all of
this is that the PNS takes more
eort to stay active. When youre
operating in a chronically stressed
state, your bodys repair systems
arent running. Think about it
its far easier to become and stay
frustrated while sitting in a trac
jam than it is to feel relaxed, right?
It also doesnt help that our lives
have become a never-ending routine of multitasking and juggling
various assignments. Our to-do
lists are endless, our schedules are
overbooked, and we constantly operate in overdrive. Consequently,
our SNS often lingers in the on
state at times when all we really
need is some time o.
And so, this begs the question,
how do we use the PNS to keep
stress at bay? The key is to pursue activities that reactivate this
hampered system but there is
one activity in particular, involving
various positions, deep breathing,
and stretching, that more and more
physicians are getting excited about.
Stop it were not talking
about that.
Were talking about yoga. Yoga

is qualitatively dierent from any
other type of physical activity in
that it consists of a unique combination of muscular contractions,
stretching workouts, relaxation
techniques, and breathing exercises. Its not just some popular fad
its been around for thousands
of years and its benefits go far
beyond just feeling more relaxed.
However, only recently have studies convincingly proven that practicing yoga on a regular basis can
bring about measurable changes in
the bodys SNS, helping to increase
activity in our PNS while warding
o symptoms of stress-related illnesses. Additionally, studies, especially ones focusing on the impact
of the autonomic nervous system
on the heart, prove that yoga has
an enormously positive effect on
heart health.
How is yoga so eective? It reduces and balances out the levels of
cortisol in our bodies, a hormone
that fuels our split-second stress
reactions. In turn, this dampens
the bodys response to stress. Yoga
also boosts levels of the feel-good
brain chemicals like GABA, serotonin, and dopamine all responsible for feelings of relaxation
and contentedness. And, notably,
its those three neurotransmitters
that various mood-altering medications like antidepressants and antianxiety drugs try to target.
Published in Alternative Therapies In Health And Medicine, a
recent study examined the eects
of yoga on patients with early and
moderate stages of hypertension
(high blood pressure). After the
sessions, most patients were able to
reduce their dose of blood pressure
medications (or, in some cases,
eliminate their intake altogether).
During a similar study, research
instructor Paula R. Pullen, Ph.D.,
from the Morehouse School of
Medicine, looked at yogas impact
on inflammation by observing
what happens in the bodies of
heart failure patients attending
yoga classes. Pullen randomly assigned some patients to yoga sessions while having others undergo
standard medical care. Unsurprisingly, it was the patients attending
yoga who experienced signicantly
improved levels of hormones, neurotransmitters, and biomarkers.
Her findings illustrate how yoga
can actually aect the tiniest molecules, ones that are widely known
to predict risk for serious diseases.
People tend to think of yoga
as being all about exibility its
not, says Pullen. Yoga balances
the body, the hormonal system, and
the stress response. Its about rebalancing and healing the body. Plus,
by reducing inammation a major health adversary, responsible for
many problems, ranging from heart
disease to diabetes to depression
the risk for the onset of major
diseases is eectively lower.
And if thats not enough, yoga
has also been shown to boost immune functioning. Researchers
speculate that this is due to a reduction in the levels of cortisol
a stress hormone in our bodies.
Too much circulating cortisol can
diminish how well the immune
system functions because it puts

up a barrier against certain white
blood cells that help ght o illnesses. By practicing yoga, we can
boost our bodys defenses, and in
turn, boost our health.
Back at my yoga class, were
nishing up with pranayama, a
standing pose focusing on deep
breathing. I made it through an
entire class, and despite the physical and mental exertion, I actually
do feel better more relaxed and
less stressed. I know one class isnt
a cure-all, nor will it eradicate all of
lifes stressors, but its a start. And
if anything, its taught me how to
harness the power to make myself
feel better. Plus, now I know its
possible to get to a place where the
L.A. rush hour wont drive me o a
mental cli.
The problem
lies in the fact
that in todays
world, we use
this survival
mechanism
less to flee from
predators and
more to fight
off rush-hour
traffic, meet
work deadlines,
stay alert during
meetings, and
endure the
frantic ticking of
the clock.
Fall 2015
How Self-Aware Are We?

By Drew Turney
In the movie Self/less, Ben Kingsley plays a wealthy industrialist who has only a
few months left to live. So he hires an enigmatic medical organization to transfer his
consciousness into the body of a younger man, one they tell him has been grown in
a lab, an empty vessel of youth, strength, and vigor waiting for him to enjoy.
In terms of plot lines, the idea of transferring the mind into a new body or
even another substrate, like an electronic machine isnt new. We saw it in the
most successful lm of all time James Camerons Avatar, as well as in the classic anime Ghost in the Shell, and even in last years Transcendence.
But with our expanded knowledge of neuroscience and computing power,
whose prospects today would have seemed like science ction just a decade ago,
might such a transposition be at all possible?
Some of the breakthroughs of the late 20th
century in both data processing and cognition
were achieved following the realization that
brains and computers are actually quite similar.
The on/o states of a computer bit are uncannily like the ring/dormant states of neurons.
If such mechanics gave rise to something as
detailed and rich as human consciousness in
the latter, couldnt this awareness somehow be
captured and transposed onto the digital body
of the former?
LIFTING THE GHOST FROM

THE MACHINE
When it comes to capturing and transferring the
activity of the mind, imagine some sort of neural
scanner that can read the on/o states of every
neuron in your brain, and is then able to transpose these into a computer program or even into
another human brain. Might the I you can feel
living in your body shake its new head, blink its
eyes, and say I think, therefore I am?
Even if were not at that stage yet, surely

we have the computing power to isolate and
transport a certain piece of mind stu
an individual instance of subjective, conscious
experience, an element referred to by analytic
philosophy as qualia.
Why isnt there an iPhone app that can scan
and send me the knowledge of your spouses
birthday you hold inside your head, or send you
a few seconds of my experience of the immediate environment I was in while writing this very
paragraph?
Baroness Susan Greeneld is a British scientist and author whos been writing about minds
and brains for decades. Besides her controversial
views on how exposure to technology affects
development in the young, her research also focuses on the eects of Parkinsons and Alzheimers disease and she reminds us that the brain
isnt a Google database where something like a
fact can simply be downloaded and transmitted.
COVER
Consciousness,
then, is a mere
hallucination
we only
feel like we
are in charge
and make
free decisions,
whereas in
reality our
decisions are
dictated to us
by the laws of
physics and
the motion of
particles that
were put in
place 13.7
billion years ago
at the birth of
our Universe.
Transposed Mind contd

Say you know the word for
table in French, she says. Thats
called semantic memory, which
is memory for facts that arent really personal to you. Now say you
went to the seaside with Auntie Flo
when you were 5 years old. Each
time you recall it, it will be from
a dierent perspective colored by
changing attitudes to Auntie Flo,
changing attitudes to holidays and
other associations. Every memory
you have is nested in other memories and other values, so its not
as if you can take a snapshot and
download it.
As such, the memory of that seaside holiday when you were 5 years
old isnt a discrete piece of information, and, as it turns out, qualia
is only a philosophical term. In the
world of physics and biochemistry,
a subjective memory or any other
qualia (and the changes it undergoes) might be located in neural
networks or maps spread all over
the physical brain, an organ which
itself changes its shape, position,
and conguration all the time.
As a matter of fact, its the only
way a brain is like a computer
that icon for a le on your desktop
may look like a singular entity, but
the bits and bytes that comprise it
are spread all over your computers
hard disk as magnetic impulses,
and moreover, the files position
and arrangement shifts every time
you edit and re-save it or any other
le on your system.
THE BRAIN AS
DISTRIBUTED
PROCESSOR
All of which means that no memory, thought, or emotion exists in
isolation. Omit one neural impulse
that fires when a memory is recalled or an incident experienced
and youre likely to miss or mix up
critical data in the transfer. Maybe,
as a result, youll end up with a
memory of a holiday with Uncle
Max, even though he wasnt there.
Maybe youll be certain that it was
Marthas Vineyard and not Laguna
Beach that you visited. Maybe
youll recall the ocean being purple.
So might the obvious solution
be as we wondered above to
scan the entire brain and take a
snapshot of the brains state? If
the particular arrangement of your
brain in any given moment gives
rise to a specific state of mind,
wont capturing this neural arrangement theoretically let you
move your state of consciousness
somewhere else?
Weve entered the realm of functionalism, a school of thought that
everything we think, feel, remember, and know indeed arises simply
from the mechanical architecture
of brain cells and electrical signals
between successive synapses.
Lets say we had the technology
to replace a single neuron and have
its job be done exactly the same
way by a futuristic version of a
vacuum tube or microprocessor.
In this way, as you would get older
and succumb to the inevitable
physical breakdown caused by aging, this exchange would be done
to more and more components,
until eventually your entire biological brain will have been replaced
with bits of machinery. Will the
I you can feel living inside you
still be there?
Functionalism says it will, and its

a belief we ascribe to the rest of the
body with surprising conviction.
If you lost an arm in an accident
and received a prosthetic implant,
would you feel any less you?
As such, functionalism contends
that if we can create a brain from
a lab-grown sample or computer
program and then move the brain
state snapshot of your mind onto
it, it will go on to feel, emote, and
experience everything to the same
degree you can.
THE ILLUSORY SOUL

A follow-on eect of functionalism many nd disturbing is that
the I inside us is just a byproduct
of the brain reacting instinctively
to the environment, no dierently
than we assume it does in an earthworm or ea.
Computer scientist Anthony
Simolas book, The Roving Mind:
A Modern Approach to Cognitive
Enhancement, explains more. On
the subject, cognitive scientists
Marvin Minsky and Steven Pinker
have both argued that consciousness is an illusion constructed by
the brains subcomponents, and
as such there is no real I inside
our heads making independent
decisions: Indeed, one of the longstanding tenets of neuroscience and
philosophy is that minds are what
brains do in other words, our
consciousness arises from electrical
signals and there is no soul or ghost
in the machine, so to speak. Consciousness, then, is a mere hallucination we only feel like we are
in charge and make free decisions,
whereas in reality our decisions are
dictated to us by the laws of physics and the motion of particles that
were put in place 13.7 billion years
ago at the birth of our Universe.
Along these lines, Simola explains that if functionalism works,
its because we actually cant replace
bits of your brain with technology
and expect you to remain inside
it because theres no you to begin
with. What does exist and only
as an abstraction is a pattern of
continuation that can be stored
somewhere as information, including your DNA, your memories,
and the innite number of iterations of your persona that followed
each other.
But the paradox proposed by

functionalism is that the being created when we somehow transpose
a mind will actually think and feel,
at least as we understand these
terms. Regardless of whether the
above is true, were still machines
whose purpose is to think and feel,
reacting to outside stimulus and
deceived by the illusion of a free
will. Granted, this implies that the
facsimile will act and feel the same.
Joel Richeimer, co-chairman of
the neuroscience department at
Kenyon College, Ohio, says that if
we gradually replaced the necessary
parts with machinery the result
wouldnt be a human because of
the unique conuence of what it
is that makes something human to
begin with.
A human is a member of a species that has a specic evolutionary
history, he says. A robot wont be
human, but maybe thats not the
question. But he agrees that according to functionalism if we
created a functional equivalent to a
human being, placed it in a human
environment and gave it the proper
inputs, it would think and feel
inasmuch as we know what such
qualities mean.
What is pain? Its the function
to warn us of possible tissue damage. If thats the correct analysis of
pain, then its theoretically possible
to build a machine that experiences
pain, he says.
THE NUANCE OF FLESH

Which brings us to the next hurdle.
Those scientists excited by the advent of mind transplantation, articial intelligence, and every other
technology that would be enabled
by the brains alleged similarity to
the computer, were actually dead
wrong the two are nothing alike.
Rather than the neuron being
a chemical-based instrument no
dierent than the electromagneticbased computer byte, Greenfield
reminds us that brains have far
more analogue gradients than the
binary on/o states of a machine.
An action potential is the universal signature of a neuron, she

says, so it made it easy for people to draw parallels with on/off
switches, but we know theres a
lot more going on than just the
generation of an action potential.
Meaning that when we scan our
hypothetical brain state, we have
to do much more than just see
whether all 100 billion neurons
are switched on or o and which
of the 7,000 synaptic connections
they have committed to at the
same instant. To move or digitize
the complete consciousness, wed
have to account for every possible
chemical reaction and behavior, no
matter how small.
THE MIND IN SITU

Given the technological advancements of computing power, maybe
we can get over the issue of the
massive memory space needed for
capturing an individual state, nevertheless, a whole new problem
awaits us. The brain doesnt exist in
isolation. It both receives and sends
a constant stream of communication to and from every other system
in the body. One view of anatomy
might be that the brain is merely a
clearinghouse for disparate bits of
information, with consciousness
being a mere foil for driving the
body to meet its needs (one of the
views of functionalism).
Yo ure h u n g r y o r s e x u a l l y
aroused in response to needs communicated by the body, but theyre
felt as brain states some would
say emotions that are as much
a part of your sense of self as your
political views or career ambitions.
It works the other way too.
Study after study confirms that
married people live longer, and
that religious people are more satised, not because of their piety, but
because they feel they belong to a
supportive community.
Think of the placebo effect,
Greenfield says. We know your
mental state can change things like
your immune system physically. If
youre depressed you get more ill
and so on.
Perhaps all this means is that to
take a complete copy of the brain
wed also have to scan and capture
the complete state of everything
connected with it (central nervous
system, reproductive system, digestive system, etc.)?

If you transposed the mind state
onto another body without all
that, might you end up with a
catastrophic system crash, because
every individual body is so completely different? And not just at
the microscopic cellular level. Put
the condent mind of a tall, strapping man into a short, pudgy body
of a boy, and who knows what kind
of psychosis might result?
The memories and the sense
of self forming your brain state
right now have been inextricably
informed and construed by everything from your upbringing to the
foibles of your immune system, all
of it a roiling cauldron of instincts
and intents particular to your anatomical nexus.
Richeimer agrees, saying that
the meaning of brain events depends on a working body interacting with the world. Without it,
a brain would be a bit like your
desktop computer, he says. I can
ask Google a question, but the
answer would mean nothing to the
computer, even if it is correct.
ALL OR NOTHING
All of which brings us to new territory entirely. In trying to transfer
a mind and a sense of self successfully, it seems we have to take everything every neural impulse,
heartbeat, muscle tension, and
skin temperature reading down to
the molecular level and make a
complete copy of it, either digitally
or anatomically.
It could be said that once we
reach that stage of technology were
not transplanting a mind at all but
simply cloning an organism. Even
if we manage to make a perfect duplicate of you with your particular
experiences, memories, and sense of
self, it would only be for an instant.
Lets just say every last molecule

of you at this very moment was
somehow trans-located to another
place, Greenfield suggests. As
soon as that copy is in a dierent
environment and a dierent place it
would be a dierent person because
the brain reacts to the environment. It will start to have a dierent
experience from the real you.
But is that finally a glimmer
of hope in our endeavor? Does
Greenfield therefore admit the
copy would be living, feeling, and
conscious? By denition if its a
simulacrum of the brain rather
than a model and identical in every
regard then of course it would be,
thered be no difference between
the two, she says.
To Richeimer, the key might be
in how close the theory of functionalism is in its understanding
of the way brains really work. All
the current evidence which is of
course not the same thing as all the
evidence is that such an entity
would consider itself alive, thinking and feeling, he says. The issue
is whether functionalism is true.
For now it seems well just have
to rely on authors and Hollywood
to paint for us visions of the immortality that we hope to achieve,
but who knows how far behind
science might actually be?
Fall 2015
L
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PID
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IN
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UN
HEALTH
Johns Hopkins
University has
found that
only one in five
veterans who
sustained a
traumatic brain
injury between
2003 and
2010 actually
had their issues
documented. It
is estimated that
some 32,822
soldiers did
not receive the
treatment they
deserved.
In 1992, Alan Beck injured his head in a car accident.

Despite months of rehabilitation, the incident has left him
forgetful. He recently lost $3,000 cash that hed just been
paid. His marriage ended because his wife couldnt cope
with his mood swings. He couldnt maintain his job as a TV
producer on a prestigious show.
Twenty-three years later, it is still impacting my life, says
Beck. His face is drawn older than his 53 years. His words
sometime slur and his struggle to speak can make him appear drunk. He hasnt had alcohol since he was injured. He
hasnt been able to hold down a steady job and relies on his
gift for photography to pay most of his bills. He is usually
even-tempered but irritability can are up quickly, a hallmark
in three-quarters of those who have a traumatic brain injury.
TBI is, scientists tell us, an unseen epidemic. The Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention says that it sees 2.2 million emergency room visits a year 280,000 hospital stays,
and 50,000 deaths. These gures do not include veterans.
Total combined rates of TBI-related hospitalizations, ER visits, and deaths climbed slowly from a rate of 521 per 100,000
in 2001 and then spiked sharply in 2008 and continued to
climb through 2010 to a rate of 823.7 per 100,000.
The reason for the spike? The
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had
the military start to screen for TBI
in 2006. The Pentagon says it has
documented half a million cases
of TBI. But it is still an injury we
dont understand very well.
There are probably around 8
million Americans living with TBI,
and many have not been accurately
diagnosed. Their mood swings,
anger, concentration problems,
depression, clear fluids draining
from their eyes or nose, headaches,
persistent nausea, tiredness, and
sleeping problems (among other
issues), are often wrongfully diagnosed. The impact of a TBI can
often reveal itself as late as two
decades after the traumatic event.
It also mirrors symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, and can
even coexist with or add to those
symptoms, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Among adolescents and adults
who receive rehabilitation for TBI,

two in 10 will die ve years postinjury, and nearly four in 10 will
experience declines in function
from the level of recovery one to
two years after their injury. The
leading causes of non-fatal TBI
within the United States are falls
(35 percent), motor vehicle-related
injuries (17 percent), and strikes or
blows to the head from or against
an object (17 percent), such as
sports-related injuries.
However, according to research
by Johns Hopkins University, since
2001 at least 260,000 injuries result from wars. Many victims are
like Chief Petty Ocer John Fleming, recipient of a Bronze Star with
Valor after accompanying the Navy
SEALs on more than 77 missions.
An explosives ordnance disposal
technician, during his service he
unearthed and destroyed many
improvised bombs. Years later, he
began forgetting things and having
trouble organizing ideas. He was
demoted. Medical tests revealed
that he had suffered a mild TBI,
likely from a truck rollover in Iraq
nine years before combined with
being so close to countless explosions.
His brain injury is similar to
those sustained by many football
players and is almost a guarantee of
dementia (whose onset could occur
as early as at age 36). Notably, one
does not have to experience an actual concussion for a TBI to occur,
sub-concussive injuries as well as
other unseen damage can have just
as bad eects.
Flemings medical diagnosis did
not impress his military superiors
and he is now locked in a legal
battle with them, as are thousands
of others documented by researchers at Baltimores Johns Hopkins
Hospital not merely in an effort of retaining their jobs, but in
hopes of receiving the medical
care they desperately need. Johns
Hopkins has found that only one
in ve veterans who sustained TBI
between 2003 and 2010 actually
had their issues documented. It is
estimated that some 32,822 soldiers did not receive the treatment
they deserved.
For most, their worst battle is to
get the military to acknowledge the
damage and give them the medical
THERAPIES TO
COMBAT TBI
A number of therapies have been developed over the past
years to help combat the effects of TBI:
Gaming and virtual reality-based treatment methods are
emerging as an adjunct to physical therapy, an innovative
approach noted for helping improve gait, posture, and eye
focus.
Tests conducted at Harvard-affiliated Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston showed the benefits of homeopathy. Specifically, during the study the researchers used:
ARNICA (MOUNTAIN DAISY): To significantly
reduce swelling, pain, and complications from
a head injury.
BELLADONNA (DEADLY NIGHTSHADE): For when
a patient with TBI is distressed and lashing out.
HYPERICUM (ST. JOHNS WORT) OR CICUTA
(WATER HEMLOCK): To lessen shooting pains or
seizures after a head injury or spinal cord injury.
NATRUM SULPHURICUM (SODIUM SULPHATE):
To reduce depression, irritability, and confusion.
HELLEBORES (WHITE HELLEBORE): To increase
mental sharpness.
The study demonstrated that these remedies should show
an effect in 48 hours, and if they dont, try something else.
The National Institutes of Health recommends omega-3
fatty acids, and the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism says that turmeric and ginkgo biloba help reduce inflammation in the brain and improve circulation. Acupuncture
and massages, by good therapists, are also beneficial.
The Veterans Health Administration encourages the use
of meditation. The Real Warriors Campaign launched by the
Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and
Traumatic Brain Injury advise:
Get plenty of rest.
Increase activity slowly.
Carry a notebook write things down if you
have trouble remembering.
Establish a daily routine.
Do only one thing at a time if you are easily
distracted.
Check with someone you trust when making
decisions.
Avoid activities that could lead to another brain
injury, e.g., contact sports, motorcycle riding,
and skiing.
Avoid alcohol because it may slow healing.
Avoid caffeine or energy-enhancing products
because they may increase symptoms.
Avoid pseudoephedrine check the labels on
cough, cold, and allergy medicines.
Avoid excessive use of over-the-counter sleeping
aids, because they slow thinking and memory.
treatment and care they deserve,

according to the Journal of Head
Trauma Rehabilitation.
Sports injuries, especially hard
contact sports like boxing and
football, are primary villains of
TBI. As the evidence has been accumulating, some key players have
withdrawn from the game and
many parents are concerned about
the impact that playing a contact
sport may have on their kids future. The 2016 presidential budget
included a $5 million increase for
research into sports-related TBI in
children.
Lisa McHale, director of family
relations for the Sports Legacy Institute, works as a liaison with families who donate brain tissue samples to Boston University. Here,
chronic traumatic encephalopathy,
often caused by repetitive trauma
to the brain, is studied. Her husband, NFL player Tom McHale,
was diagnosed with CTE after his
death. This discovery explained
the years of progressively puzzling
behavior leading up to his death.
She believes that children should
not be allowed to play football and
that there should be programs to
counsel young people about the
potential risks involved and how to
avoid them.
It is dicult to treat TBI. There
are cognitive therapies available,
along with other rehabilitation
approaches and medication, but
for some like Beck, they nd that
meditation, eating only organic
foods while avoiding meats with
hormones or antibiotics, and taking a combination of 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C along with
1,000 milligrams of sh oil a day,
may help alleviate the symptoms.
While little has been understood
about the specific nature of TBI
until now, great strides in neuroscience are being made every day, and
with greater scrutiny of the disorder and the people at risk, help
may soon be on the way.
Traumatic
brain injuries,
scientists tell us,
are an unseen
epidemic. The
Centers for
Disease Control
and Prevention
says that it sees
2.2 million
emergency room
visits a year
280,000
hospital stays,
and 50,000
deaths.
Additionally, the Brain Injury Association of America

should have resources near you, go to www.biausa.org.
Fall 2015
HEALTH
eastern
tern
r
ancient
medicine
the jury is still out

by betty vine
There are several

derivatives of
Chinese herbs
that may
be useful in
treating the
aggressive brain
tumors known
as gliomas.
Crystal healing, Reiki medicine, homeopathy, massage

therapy, hypnosis, pilates, shamanism the list of alternative medicines appears to be expanding into perpetuity,
and the distinctions that separate them grow increasingly
abstruse. Its hard to tell which are just fads with no empirical evidence, and which have merit as a legitimate treatment.
The National Center for Complementary and Integrative
Health (an arm of the National Institutes of Health) estimates that over 38 percent of American adults utilize at least
one type of alternative medicine. Given the popularity of
this industry, it is imperative that we evaluate these methods
their ecacy, side eects, and contraindications using the same degree of scientic rigor applied to all medical
treatments. In this article, we will examine two of the most
popular alternative therapies: Ayurvedic medicine and traditional Chinese medicine.
AYURVEDA
Originating in India, Ayurveda is
perhaps one of the oldest alternative medicines. It dates back 8,000
years indeed, original medicine might be a more appropriate
term than alternative. Ayurvedic
practitioners believe in three fundamental energies governing our
inner and outer environments:
movement, transformation, and
structure. Known in Sanskrit as
Vata (wind), Pitta (fire), and
Kapha (earth), these primary
forces are responsible for the various characteristics of our mind and
body. Each of us has a unique
proportion of these three forces
whose particular combination
shapes our nature. These elements
are collectively known as the three
doshas. Illness arises when the
doshas are thrown out of balance.
Re-correction to ones original state
is required to restore health.
Arguably the most well-known

components of Ayurveda are yoga
and meditation. There are wellestablished healing and neuroprotective eects associated with these
practices. The problem is that no
study has closely examined how
all of Ayurvedas practices work as
a whole.
Despite this, there are still some
potentially promising results one
can draw from the tangled morass of research. To begin with,
preliminary studies suggest that
some of the compounds within
certain herbs may be implicated
in the treatment of cancer; these
include Withaferin A, Sanjeevani,
Mangosteen, MAK-4 and -5, and
AKBA. According to the organization Cancer Research UK, all of
these substances retarded or even
halted the growth of some cancerous cells in laboratory studies.
Another study conducted by the
World Health Organization found
that Ayurvedic medicine might be
eective in treating rheumatoid arthritis and even Parkinsons disease.
One Ayurvedic herb in particular stands out above the rest
Withania somnifera, also known
as Ashwagandha, which offers a
variety of therapeutic effects. A
report in the African Journal of Traditional, Complementary, and Alternative Medicines lists the results of
a number of animal studies, which
found that Ashwagandha may be
able to increase stamina, ward o
stomach ulcers, treat ovarian and
lung cancers, promote memory

and the growth of dendrites, lessen
anxiety, and improve prognosis in
neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimers disease. However, it is important to remember
that this is all deduced from the
available scientic data, and as we
have established, the accuracy of
such data may leave something to
be desired.
Moreover, some treatments prescribed by Ayurvedic practitioners
may actually be harmful. The California College of Ayurveda suggests that purication of the body
via enema may be useful in treating
Parkinsons disease. Administering
enemas for reasons other than its
indicated uses can result in dehydration as well as damage to the
organs of the lower gastrointestinal
tract. Also alarming, according to
the University of Washington, is
the presence of dangerous heavy
metals in unregulated Ayurvedic
herbs 20 percent of tested products contained lead, mercury, or
arsenic, or a combination of these
heavy metals. Thus, it is unclear
if the potential risks of Ayurvedic
medicines outweigh the benefits.
The gaping deciencies in research
make it dicult to establish the veracity of claims made by Ayurvedas
proponents as well as its critics.
TRADITIONAL
CHINESE MEDICINE
Traditional Chinese medicine is an
ancient practice with roots in Taoism. It is associated with a lexicon
of esoteric terms; these include
qi (the energy in all things), yin
and yang (the balance of opposing energies), and meridians (the
channels through which energy
flows). Practitioners believe that
the human body is an integrated
whole. Connected to nature, you
have an innate natural self-healing
ability. There are a number of practices that fall under the umbrella
of TCM, but for the purposes of

brevity, we will be limiting our discussion to Chinese herbal medicine
and acupuncture.
As is the case with Ayurveda, it
is difficult to conclude anything
with certainty based on TCM research alone. The NCCIH states,
In spite of the widespread use of
TCM in China and its use in the
West, rigorous scientic evidence
of its effectiveness is limited.
However, several Chinese herbal
compounds do seem capable of
producing therapeutic eects. For
example, one study published in
the journal Restorative Neurology
and Neuroscience found that an
herbal medicine known as Ji-SuiKang improved the prognosis of
spinal cord injuries in rats.
Notably, there are also several
derivatives of Chinese herbs that
may be useful in treating the aggressive brain tumors known as gliomas. Yong Lu, of the Hong Kong
Polytechnic University, found that
gallic acid, ursolic acid, polyphyllin D, Spica prunellae, and Paris
polyphylla, all had cytotoxic eects
on tumor cell lines. However, these
compounds were also found to be
capable of destroying healthy brain
cells (of course, the loss of healthy
cells is a side eect in many standard cancer treatments already in
use). Other Chinese herbs may be
useful in the treatment of Parkinsons and Alzheimers diseases.
Despite the potential benefits
offered by these herbs, there are
concerns regarding their safety. A
review of alternative medicines in
The Scientist details the dangers
of the Chinese herbal byproduct,
aristolochic acid. Its used to heal
wounds, soothe arthritis, expel the
placenta after childbirth, and repel
snakes, but it has documented
carcinogenic and renotoxic eects.
Stephen Bent, M.D., voices his
concerns: There are thousands
and thousands of products being
sold through all dierent kinds of
channels and there isnt the safety
framework to capture and monitor
how often people are having side
eects or problems.
Conversely, the ancient practice
of acupuncture is generally regarded as safe, if not necessarily eective. Data is once again conicting.
This therapy involves inserting
micro-needles into the skin at prescribed points along the meridians;

a more modern variation known as
electroacupuncture applies electrical currents to the acupoints.
The problem in determining the
potential value of acupuncture is
the ecacy paradox, according to
The Scientist: Either acupuncture
exerts a powerful but reproducible placebo eect in patients, or
inserting needles randomly has
the same eect as inserting needles
into some 400 acupuncture points
that traditional Chinese practitioners believe help unblock ones
qi, or life force. The other fundamental problem with acupuncture
research is due to the fact that
researchers still dont have a good
idea what acupunctures mechanism of action might be, which
makes it extremely dicult to create an appropriate control.
If acupuncture does, in fact,
offer relief for various ailments,
what could explain its success? The
Scientist proposes two possible
theories. It could be related to the
localized release of adenosine,
or it could have something to do
with the relaxing of connective tissues. Cancer Research UK asserts
that acupuncture causes the nerves
to release endorphins as well as
serotonin.
Clearly, there is not enough data
to make any denitive statements
about acupuncture, or TCM as a
whole. Bruce H. Robinson, a biophysical chemist at the University
of Washington, puts it best: There
are thus at least 1000 trillion synapses (1,000,000,000,000,000
synapses) in one human nervous
system: 1 quadrillion. This is 100
million synapses per cubic mil-
limeter of brain (smaller than a

pinhead of brain tissue). Most of
these connections simply enable
the brains neurons to talk to each
other, as 99 percent of the neurons
in the cortex connect only to one
another. The other 1 percent control the rest of the body. All this
working together creates waves of
energy we dont really understand.
The same can be said for
Ayurvedic medicine. Though some
research suggests these alternative
medicines may offer a degree of
healing value, their potential is
seemingly shrouded in ambiguity
an obscurity that results from
the scarce, fragmented, and sometimes fallacious body of evidence
in which the subject is currently
mired. Then again, these ancient
systems are rooted in mystical
and metaphysical doctrines, and
it seems unlikely that science and
spirituality will ever truly see eye to
eye. This does not mean we should
abandon the pursuit of reconciling
the two or in this case, the pursuit of nding empirical evidence
that proves or disproves the ecacy
of traditional Eastern medicines.
It simply means we should bear
in mind the understanding that
there are some things we can never
discern through reason; there may
exist some ancient knowledge that
transcends our logical realities.
The problem
is that no
study has
closely
examined
how all of
Ayurvedas
practices work
as a whole.
Fall 2015
TUNNEL O
F
SCIENCE
Soldiers and
ministers
arent the only
ones having
near-death
experiences.
One of the most
fascinating
groups of
individuals to
have undergone
such events are
neurologists.
In 1982, a young stained-glass artist by the name of

Mellen-Thomas Benedict lay dying of an inoperable brain
tumor. In order to have the best quality of life before his immanent death, Benedict declined chemotherapy treatments.
After about 18 months of hospice care, Benedict woke up one
day around 4:30 a.m., knowing he was going to die. A few
hours later, Benedict had a near-death experience in which he
perceived being surrounded by a beautiful shining light that
he automatically felt was a symbol of the Source or Higher
Self. He described the experience as one of joy and peace: It
was just overwhelming. It was all the love youve ever wanted,
and it was the kind of love that cures, heals, regenerates. He
described feeling a strong desire to communicate and travel
toward this light that emanated love, peace, harmony, as human souls swam around him. Benedicts own consciousness
expanded perceiving and knowing all things from all
time. It was this stage of innite consciousness that revealed
to him that death should not be seen as an end but instead
as a transition into the innite reality of being: immortality.
Benedict was clinically dead.
His nurse rushed to his bedside
a nd fou nd no vita l signs, no
blood pressure or cardiac activity.
Shortly after leaving the room, she
heard a loud crash. Upon returning, she found him lying on the
oor, trying to reach the window.
Within three days, Benedict was
discharged from the hospice and
felt better than he had ever felt
before. Three months later, followup brain scans were performed
and astonishingly showed no signs
of the tumor. Benedicts physician
referred to this occurrence as a
spontaneous remission (which is
commonly known as a spontaneous regression: the spontaneous
cure or improvement of a severe
disease). But Benedict chose to
call it a miracle.
Within the last two decades,

there has been a signicant increase
in people reporting near-death experiences like Benedicts. Multiple
surveys conducted throughout
the United States, Australia, and
Germany suggest that four to 15
percent of the population has had
near-death experiences. One study
found that nearly 800 people in
the United States encounter a
near-death experience every single
day. Even though there have been
an increasing number of people
willing to come out of the closet
and talk about these higher consciousness incidents, near-death
experiences have been occurring
for thousands of years.
Back in the year 300 B.C., Plato
described the near-death experience of a warrior named Er, who,
after being slain in battle, woke
up on his funeral pyre to tell the
surrounding crowd about meeting
deities and fallen companions in
the afterlife. In 1741, George de
Benneville, a physician and lay
minister in Europe, wrote a vivid
account of his near-death experi-
ence, one which included all of the

common motifs: I quickly came
to a place which appeared to my
eyes as a level plain, so extensive
that my sight was not able to reach
its limits, lled with all sorts of delightful fruit trees and which sent
forth such fragrant odors that all
the air was lled as with incense.
Fast-forward about two and a half
centuries, and we nd that soldiers
and ministers arent the only ones
having near-death experiences.
One of the most fascinating groups
of individuals to have undergone
such events are neurologists.
Dr. Eben Alexander, appointed
professor of neurology at Harvard
Medical School and best-selling author of the autobiographical book Proof of Heaven: A
Neurosurgeons Journey into the
Afterlife, was skeptical about
near-death experiences until
Nov. 10, 2008, when he became
comatose due to a rare form of
meningitis. Despite multiple procedures and antibiotic treatments
over a seven-day period, Alexanders body deteriorated fast and his
team of physicians soon gave up
hope. Then on Nov. 17, 2008, Alexander miraculously awoke to the
amazement of his family and doctors and realized that his previous
notions of near-death experiences
were totally wrong. He described
his enigmatic incident as being
transformative and indescribable. He experienced a unified
consciousness and was aware of a
divine presence which conveyed
thoughts of love and peace: You
are loved. You are cherished forever. Theres nothing you can do
wrong. You have nothing to worry
about. You will be taken care of.
Alexander also described the
occurrence as being hyper-real
and extremely crisp and vivid.
In a conversation with Diana
DiFranco holistic psychotherapist and frequent lecturer at the
American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative
Experiences she described to
me how near-death experiences
are commonly felt as being more
real than everyday life. Colors,
smells, and sensations become
fully optimized like never before.
After this event, Alexander had
to change his previous thoughts
about near-death experiences and

invite a new understanding of the
brain into his work: That hyperreality that people describe is
not something that is going to be
explained by [this] little simplistic
talking about CO2 and oxygen
levels. That just wont work. I
promise you that wont work.
This statement directly challenges the notions of Dr. Lakhmir
Chawla, an associate professor of
anesthesiology and critical care
medicine at George Washington
University. Chawla asserts that
near-death experiences are simply
caused by a surge of electrical
activity as the brain runs out of
oxygen before death. However,
the oxygen-depletion theory is
only one of many classical neurophysiological theories challenged
by people who have undergone
near-death experiences.
Many neuropsychologists still
believe that our consciousness
is a product of the proper functioning of our brains with the
death of our brains comes the
death of our consciousness. This
notion falls under the realm of
material science, where material (i.e., the brain) gives rise to
mind and consciousness. However
near-death experiences support
the notion that consciousness is in
fact non-local (i.e., not conned to
the brain) and that death is only a
moment of transition from a temporal consciousness to a timeless
experience of it. This new notion
of consciousness has produced
an emerging movement called
post-materialist science, lead by
internationally renowned scientists
from a variety of scientic elds including biology, neuroscience, psychology, medicine, and psychiatry.
Dr. Gary Schwartz professor of
psychology, medicine, neurology,
psychiatry, and surgery at the University of Arizona is one of the
pioneering researchers and supporters of post-materialist science.
During a conversation I had
with Schwartz at the Spirituality
Mind Body Institute at Columbia University, he spoke of how
the brain seems to be more like
a receiver of consciousness than
an actual producer of it. As such,
the brain is similar to a TV set.
It merely picks up the signal of
consciousness and has nothing to

do with actually creating it. The
claim that staunch materialists
would like to make is that neardeath experiences can be explained
as residual ring of either the cortex or subcortical structures after
it has been damaged or the heart
stopped. But the problem with
that wishful thinking is that all
electrical activity ceases within
40 seconds to a minute of the
time that blood ow has stopped.
There is no evidence of electrical
ring of the brain at all. Schwartz
argues that materialists simply
find it impossible to believe that
consciousness continues after the
brain has stopped functioning,
even though new research clearly
shows that consciousness survives
physical death.
In 2001, Dr. Pim van Lommel
researcher and retired cardiologist at the Rijnstate Hospital in the
Netherlands investigated neardeath experiences in cardiac arrest
patients. Of the 344 patients who
were successfully resuscitated after suering cardiac arrest, 41 of
them reported undergoing vivid
near-death experiences that included out-of-body sensations.
The patients were able to describe
details of their conditions during
their cardiac arrest, despite being
clinically dead as indicated by
their atlined brain-stem activity.
Even though these ndings clearly
point toward the post-materialist
notion that consciousness does
not solely reside in the brain, van
Lommels results were critiqued
on many grounds.
In 2008, Dr. Jason Braithwaite
senior lecturer in cognitive
neuroscience at University of Birminghams Behavioural Brain
Sciences Centre published a
critique of van Lommels study in
the journal Skeptic. In his critique
he states how van Lommel and
his team misconstrued the dyingbrain hypothesis by mistakenly
interpreting the f lat readings of
an electroencephalogram test as
correlating directly to no brain

activity. (Recently, doctors discovered deep-level brain activity
in comatose patients.) Yet, this critique seems weak. Although there
may be some brain activity during
atline periods, this insignicant
activity would most likely be unable to account for the highly complex thought processes, visions,
insights, and sensations that occur
during near-death experiences.
Organizations such as the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at
Teachers College, Columbia University, labs like the Laboratory
for Advances in Consciousness
and Health at the University of
Arizona, and conferences as for
example the A merican Center
for the Integration of Spiritually
Transformative Experiences are
capturing the minds and hearts of
many researchers and healthcare
providers who are beginning to
understand the importance of
recognizing and allowing neardeath experiences to change the
current neurophysiological model
of consciousness, life, and death.
It seems that both materialists
and post-materialists have a long
way to go when it comes to understanding what happens when
the brain begins to die. Maybe
the answer isnt so elusive, and we
will perhaps nd it sooner than we
think, in this life, or the next.
Recently,
doctors
discovered
deep-level
brain activity
in comatose
patients.
Fall 2015
THE
PITUITARY
GLAND
UNDERSTANDING THE MASTER GLAND
by James Sullivan
The vast size of the human brain and its ever-growing network is astounding enough to imagine a large piece of gray matter that continuously builds
new connections between the 100 billion neurons it houses; the key to how our
brains got to grow so large in just a few million years of evolution. However, in
a powerhouse of this size controlling our day-to-day decisions, motor functions, vision, and nerves so much depends upon a small gateway, known as the
third eye for its location between the eyes, nestled just below the center of your
forehead. Its only about the size of a pea, controlled by the hypothalamus (which
itself is only about one three-hundredth the weight of the brain) and is heavily
guarded by a bony structure within the skull, the sella turcica.
Perhaps most striking about this so-called
third eye is that humans are one of the few species in which the three lobes are less distinct,
with the intermediate lobe being only a few thin
cell layers apart from the anterior and posterior
lobes. Think of the structure as a trac light
blinking signals from three dierent directions.
The pituitary glands functioning is closely
connected with the hypothalamus region of the
brain, which supplies it with oxygenated blood,
along with the anterior lobe and the sex organs.
Due to the pituitarys constant interaction
with messages from glands throughout the
brain relayed from all three of its lobes it
is known as the master gland. Those who have
heard of it usually know of the pituitary in the
way that it affects growth (the result of hor-
mones secreted from the anterior lobe) the

overactive kind, meaning sudden, raging and
out of control growth spurts but the master
glands job isnt all that simple. It also regulates
body temperature, blood pressure, water and
salt concentrations throughout the body as
well as the kidneys, thyroid, and some functions
of the sex organs. Even our sleep patterns are
the result of the pituitary gland, as it works with
the pineal gland to produce the sleep-promoting
hormone melatonin, setting our bodies into ritual circadian rhythms every night. Therefore, its
regular functioning as a glandular switchboard
is the key to our well-being.
For many years, its functions were not fully
understood. Claudius Galen, an ancient Roman
physician (a team doctor for the gladiators, as it
BRAIN IN FOCUS
The frontal
pituitary is in
charge of the
production
of oxytocin,
the chemical
responsible for
both building
feelings of
intimacy as well
as strengthening
social bonds.
Pituitary Gland contd

were), thought that it was merely
the source of nasal mucus, and accordingly its name comes from the
Latin phrase: Gland from which
the slime drips. It took nearly
2,000 years for physicians to refute
this claim. Galen did, however,
correctly identify the central nervous system, to which the pituitary
is connected.
In India, the gland was held in
higher regard, having been called
the seat of the mind, a critical
energy point for practitioners of
chakra for attaining the state of
pure consciousness a condition in which one experiences the
revelation of absolute truth. To
this day, modern practitioners
of chakra hold that the frontal
lobe regulates emotional intelligence the driving force that sees
the poetic part of life, perceiving
the world through metaphor and
music while the anterior lobe
focuses on concrete problems and
intellectual thoughts.
Things became a bit more complicated, however, in the 19th century, when epidemics of tuberculosis wiped out nearly one quarter
of Europes adult population. By
1918, the outbreak accounted for
one-sixth of all deaths in France
alone. Patients that became comatose due to this disease showed
signs of anomalies in the hypothalamus betraying an important
mind and body connection in the
pituitary gland. It was hardly the
rst case demonstrating this either.
An examination of nearly 30,000
brains revealed that patients who
suffered ulcers also had abnormalities in the same region. What
could this small structure within
the brain have to do with such a
remote part of the body?
In 1971, Andrew Schally recognized the gonadotropin-releasing

hormone as a crucial chemical messenger within the hypothalamus.
Six years later, Schally discovered
that it was secreted into the anterior pituitary via the bloodstream,
through which it would then reach
the sex organs. He was awarded
the Nobel Prize in medicine for his
work. Thanks to Schally, a great
deal of physical conditions could
be understood in greater depth
why strokes or sudden weight gain
can cause a loss of sexual desire,
and why cutting o blood circulation can cause damage to the
reproductive organs and digestive
system paving the way for new
possible treatments.
We now know that the anterior
lobe is associated with hormones
released in response to physical
stress, and that in many ways the
lobe is responsible for how the
body deals with reacting to anxieties, while the frontal pituitary is in
charge of the production of oxytocin, the chemical inducing feelings
of intimacy as well as strengthening
social bonds interestingly, this
friendship-fortifying ability of the
chemical works on humans and
animals alike, as studies conducted
on people who petted their dogs
for ve minutes eectively found
higher than normal levels of oxytocin in both the owners and their
dogs compared to subjects who
had not engaged in this exchange.
Oxytocin was later synthesized
in laboratories for the purpose of
starting and increasing the speed
of labor during childbirth, as well
as to stop the rate of bleeding that
follows delivery.
However, this is only scratching
the surface of what the chemical has
to oer. If it can help with physical
complications when synthesized,
it also might play an important
role when it comes to psychological and personality disorders. Two
important studies have found that
it reduces the symptoms of autism.
Little is understood at the moment
regarding autism, a behavioral
disorder in which patients limit
their degree of interaction with
other people, conning themselves
to little beyond a narrow set of interests. It is a neurodevelopmental
disorder, with an onset in early
childhood, leading many people to

incorrectly attribute its symptoms
to vaccinations.
In 2007, a study sponsored by
the National Institutes of Health
and the Childrens Brain Research
Foundation found a connection
between the symptoms of autism
in children and a lack of function in the genes that produce
oxytocin and further research
showed that oxytocin is also directly related to regulating levels of
fear and trust, the latter of which
tends to be built up more with
high concentrations of oxytocin,
while minimizing fear and uncertainty. It has also shown to help
with the recognition of emotions,
which autism patients typically
have diculty with. Even empathy
has been shown to increase due to
changes in levels of oxytocin, the
lack of which has been attributed
to a number of social problems of
the day, such as school bullying.
Since the beginning of time,
people have sought to understand
emotions a thirst that has
echoed throughout the humanities
for centuries, but has long been a
perplexing struggle for the sciences.
While theres an evident disconnect
between the practice of medicine
and the discipline of psychology, it
seems that perhaps the golden age
of neuroscience in which we live is
gradually bridging that gap nding a way to uncover the ingredients behind sadness and feelings of
joy, and with this correcting some
of the long-term trends molded by
centuries of evolution, changing life
and the experience of being alive
for the better.
Personality
A CONVERSATION WITH LUCY BROWN

by Liz Belilovskaya
Dr. Lucy Brown is currently a clinical professor in neurology at Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. She also served as the director of the Laboratory for Functional Neuroanatomy and Movement Disorders for over 20 years
though admits that her greatest challenge was studying the neurophysiological
basis of romantic love.
The diculty was convincing others that studying something as personal, powerful, and subjective as love would actually be possible. We did the study and
tried to publish the paper, she recalls. The reviews that came back were hilarious
and I really should have saved them, because some of the people said that there
was no such thing as romantic love.
And yet, these studies ended up pioneering
what we now commonly refer to as the neuroscience of romantic love. The research proved to
be relevant for studying other important aspects
of human experience too: the neuroscience
of drug addiction, suicide, and post-breakup
depression.
Brain World recently had the pleasure of discussing with Dr. Brown the conundrum that is
romantic love.
Brain World: When did you discover your interest

in neuroscience, or science in general?
Lucy Brown: I was in New York feeling very
depressed after the death of a family member, so I
went to a psychiatrist who gave me an antidepressant that totally changed my entire outlook on
life. I said, Wait a second! You mean a chemical
can change the way I think so drastically? I have
to nd out more about this. Although I was a
philosophy major, once I had this experience I
Fall 2015
Brown contd
You may think

that everyone
loves differently
that every
person has a
different response
and that no two
people can ever
be the same.
There are parts of
the brain where
no two people
are the same, but
there are some
parts of the brain
where we are all
the same. They
are these really
primitive parts
of the brain,
parts that we
share with other
mammals.
did something very daring for myself then, which was to take a course
in physiological psychology at New
York University. And I loved it.
BW: How did you get into studying
the neurological basis of romantic love?
LB: Its a classic pioneering story.
Ten years ago, no one wanted to
accept that you could study romantic love, and now its kind of its
own eld. I heard the term about
two years ago and nearly fell to
my knees! What? Neuroscience of
relationships? So, its been a lot of
fun and a lot of trouble.
It was just not a popular subject
to study. At the time, people were
looking into drug-induced euphoria, and I wanted to see natural
euphoria. The magic of love seemed
to me to be the best natural euphoria there is. Certainly we needed to
know when someone was in that
state. When I met Art Aron
who had been studying romantic
love for years, and was coming up
against terrible problems in getting
money for research I learned
about something called the Passionate Love Scale, which has been
around since 1986. People had really looked at this and could quantify the feeling, in some way. I mean
there was a number we could put to
this, and I said, Aha! Im in.
BW: How does one quantify love?
LB: Its hard. There are many different kinds of love, and its very
important that we studied earlystage intense romantic love. It is
a very specific kind of love that
changes lives. Its when people y
from New York to San Francisco
just to see somebody. People do
amazing things when they are in
these early stages of romantic love,
when they cant think of anything
else. So, thats the easier type of
love to study really.
BW: Why?
LB: Every aspect of who you are
is based on your brain physiology.
One of the things that made me optimistic about doing this study from
the very beginning was that I realized people would change their lives
because of a feeling a very strong
feeling. It was obviously going to
change some brain system activity,
because if you change your life, its
going to show up in the brain.
And so, for the purpose of our
experiment the people who were in
love were shown a picture of their
romantic partner. They had to think
about that person and the romantic
times they had together. Not sex.
The idea we had was that sex and
romance were dierent. People can
have sex without romance, and feel
romance without sex. And when
you are feeling attached to someone, that is dierent too.
You may think that everyone
loves dierently that every person has a different response and
that no two people can ever be the
same. There are parts of the brain
where no two people are the same,
but there are some parts of the
brain where we are all the same.
They are these really primitive parts
of the brain, parts that we share
with other mammals.
Our original hypothesis was that
romantic love is a developed form
of a mammalian drive to pursue
preferred mates. The data is pretty
much consistent with this idea.
Romantic love is an elaboration of
what we see in other animals, other
vertebrates. Birds have all kinds of
behaviors that they engage in to try
to attract a mate, and some birds
mate for a lifetime. They still go o
and have little affairs, but theyll
stick pretty much with one other
bird. Swans do this. I have come to
think of it now as a survival system.
Its a drive like hunger or thirst.
BW: Why dont some people fall

in love?
LB: That is a big question, which I
cannot answer. Some people never
experience romantic love.
What happens very often, by the
way, is that people dont experience
romantic love until they turn 6065 years old. Then theyve grown
older, and maybe have been in a
marriage before, but the spouse
had died and suddenly, they fall in
love for the rst time.
I have no idea as to why it happens later in life when it could have
happened earlier, but romantic
love isnt necessary for marriage
thats for sure! It can help marriages
tremendously, because people stay
together and remember the romantic times. I know some people who
say theyre in happy marriages, but
insist that they didnt fall in love
and that theyve never been in love.
They seem to me to be completely
normal people and emotionally
intact, but I have no idea why.
BW: You say some people have never
experienced romantic love, and that
love is a drive and not a feeling. Its
an interesting paradox.
LB: Right, its a drive more than
a feeling. We think of it as a feeling, but feelings come and go. The
strict denition of an emotion is an
expression you can see on a face.
Things like anger, fear, or surprise.
When youre in love, emotions
or feelings could be euphoric or
anxious, or you can feel a little bit
depressed. You have many feelings
around romantic love the core
of romantic love is the goal of attaining an emotional union with
the other person. But we know
from the brain systems involved
in rewards and motivation that the
parts of the brain which are common to everyone were not consistent with classical emotion.
BW: How do you do the studies?
LB: We show a person (the brain)
a picture of their romantic partner. The control is a picture of
someone who they know but have
no emotional feelings for. It has
to be a familiar face. We had one
person bring a picture of her doorman only in New York would
someone do that. So, when you do
a functional MRI study, the signals
we can get out of the brain are

very small. It is a tall miracle that
we can get signals from the brain
from an awake, behaving human at
all. You dont compare a group of
people in love to a group of people
who are not in love. You compare
the response of how one person
reacts to someone they love versus
someone they dont love (thats just
a familiar face).
One of the problems though, is
that youre asking people to look at
a picture of their romantic partner
for 20 seconds and think romantic
thoughts, and then youre asking
them to cut that feeling off and
look at another face and just feel
neutral. The problem is that the
person could still be thinking of
their partner, so how do you cut
o that romantic feeling? A great
way to cut it o (this is a practical
note for people who want to cut
o a romantic feeling) is to count
backwards by seven from a large
number like 2011.
So, we alternatively showed the
subjects a picture of their romantic
partner, and then a number like
2011. The instructions were to
then count back by seven. After
this, they were shown a picture
of the neutral person (emotionally neutral), for 20 seconds. They
either recall memories of that person, or just keep looking at their
face. Then we had them do the
counting backwards task, and then
had them look at a picture of their
romantic partner again, and so on.
The person is in that scanner doing that task for about 15 minutes.
We also collect an anatomical scan,
and then merge the anatomical
data with the functional data from
the scanner. You are inducing these
feelings of romance in a person
and then youre comparing those
feelings of romance to feelings of
another neutral person.
BW: Once you have the two comparisons, what are you looking for in
the fMRI?
LB: We are looking for changes
in blood ow, which means there
will be changes in oxygen and
glucose demand. Its just like using
a muscle. When you use it a lot,
you get increased blood ow and
therefore increased oxygen and
glucose delivery to it. Nerve cells,
when they work hard, need oxygen

and glucose too and right in that
moment. Muscles actually take a
little longer and were lucky that we
can see these changes in the brain
right away. So that is the signal that
we are looking at. Its an index of
the metabolic demand made by the
nerve cells, and what we nd is that
this has been replicated many
times people who are in the
early stage of romantic love, even if
they have been in a loving marriage
for 20 years, say that they are still
in love with their partners. They
increase activity in these primitive
reward systems of the brain.
BW: Does dopamine and oxytocin
play a role in the formation of romantic love?
LB: Hormones like dopamine and
oxytocin are critical for romance
and attachment. We just dont
know what comes first and how
these things start really. We just
have hypotheses about it. For example, we know that big parts of
the dopamine system are activated,
but we dont even know for sure
that it is dopamine. Were assuming this because it is involved in
many addictive behaviors considered so typical of romantic love.
Also, we think of oxytocin as
being more involved in attachment
and longer-term relationships.
Thats because it has been shown
in animals in instances of longterm pair bonding. Weve seen in
some of the human studies that the
part of the brain that contains the
oxytocin receptors is active later in
relationships. And the trouble is
that its pretty critical to have the
dopamine system active in order to
have this system.
When the subject is looking at

the person they dont know or have
no attachment to, there is almost
no reaction. Now, when the person
is looking at their romantic partner, there is a clear reaction.
BW: Has anyone observed this reaction in any other mammal, like a
dolphin?
LB: No, there have never been
any other studies about this. But
theres a huge body of research
pertaining to attraction and pair
bonding in prairie voles. There
are two types: mountain prairie
voles and meadow voles. They are
genetically just a little bit dierent.
One is promiscuous and the other
practices pair bonding and there
is a part of the brain that is responsible for this. Oxytocin is on the
map because of these studies. And
they then went in and changed the
gene in the promiscuous ones and
made them pair bonding voles, so
this research inuenced our whole
idea a lot.
BW: What are some observations you
may have made about the process of
falling in romantic love?
LB: Romantic love is part of the
brains survival system. Even the
people who go without romantic
love have a community or some
sort of attachments that are helping them survive. When you pair
up with someone, its protection. It
also helps you nd resources. If its
more than one person looking for
food, its more likely that theyll
find it and share it. I mean, you
dont necessarily need romantic

love but it is helpful, especially if
youre going to have children.
BW: How does the beginning stage
of romantic love ourish into a longlasting, emotionally lucrative bond?
LB: [Laughs.] Everyone would like
to know that. Relationships involve laying down memories about
your experiences with the other
person. The more developed parts
of your brain, those that are newer,
make decisions about whether
these experiences are really such a
good idea. It can take a while to
nd out about people.
By the way, another important
thing about this is that these systems are at the unconscious level,
which makes them so hard to control.
Over time, experiences with that
person play on the attachment systems, which are newer parts of the
brain. The attachment system needs
a lot of positive reinforcement. You
need a lot of positive experience
with the other person in order to
keep the relationship going.
We were built to be addicted to
people and I consider love a natural
addiction.
BW: So when you do the fMRIs,

what parts of the brain are the most
activated?
LB: So its the ventral tegmental
area, which is part of the brain
stem and is involved in romantic
love, and the caudate nucleus. This
nucleus receives messages from the
ventral tegmental area and it all
happens in milliseconds. So, youre
able to look at the entire brain, and
you look for areas of the brain that
have changed consistently over
repeated trials.
Fall 2015
Bringing
Neuroscience
to the
Community
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
IN LIBERTYVILLE
By Younglim Lee
It has been a long journey, a journey

driven by my heart and maneuvering
my way from the science lab to the
community. After receiving my Ph.D.
and postdoctoral training in neuroscience from Yale University, I taught and
trained students and psychiatric residents at the Indiana University School
of Medicine. Then I moved to Chicago
and worked as a senior research scientist at Abbott Laboratories. Throughout
my 23-year career as a neuroscientist, I
dedicated myself to preclinical research
in anxiety, depression, and other mood
disorders. My goal was to develop a
better drug to help patients overcome
mood disorders instead of simply treating their symptoms.
In my search of conquering anxiety itself,

I started training at a Body & Brain center in
Chicago, where they use a methodology that
consists of traditional Eastern mind and body
training integrated with neuroscientic ndings.
People participate in physical, emotional, and
cognitive exercises, as well as postures, breathing techniques, along with guided imagery and
games designed to improve sensory awareness,
motor control, and balance while sharpening your emotional regulation, attention, and
powers of imagination and creativity. Through
this training, I understood and experienced the
power of utilizing the qi energy system a
term originating from Chinese philosophy and
medicine to heal my mind and body.
This experience profoundly changed my
overview and approach to understanding disease. So in the summer of 2011, I decided to
quit my job to become a full-time instructor
at the Body & Brain center in Libertyville, Ill.
You can imagine how my mother reacted at my
decision to throw away the degree from Yale.
But after experiencing the power of this training, my heart knew exactly what I needed to do.
I realized there is no need for a particular drug,
or a particular technique, when it comes to solving most of our societys problems. All we have
to do is unleash our own capacity and power
to overcome illness however it strikes. Our
brains and bodies have this technology built-in
within themselves.
As manager at the Libertyville center, I met
so many people who were eager to help others in their healing process too. This collective
desire created an environment that naturally
encouraged me to do community outreach. It
was through my fellow members that I could
understand the reality surrounding the center.
I felt their passion to serve those most in need.
Moved by their stories and by their will to help,
I just let things happen through them.
Libertyville and the neighboring community
have a number of high schools that are academically excellent, but are not without problems.
Stevenson High School, one of the most wellknown high schools in Illinois due to its high
standards, is also known for its competitive
environment that brings out high levels of stress
upon its teachers and students. Christina Tu,
an instructor at the Libertyville center, and a
Stevenson graduate herself, decided to create a
mindful, living environment within the school
for the students to thrive. Through one of her
former teachers, she contacted the school and
was able to present our training program to the
schools dean and a school psychiatrist, both

of whom fully supported the idea and decided
to bring the program aboard as an after-school
activity. Christina offered free classes to the
general student population but specically targeted the varsity basketball and lacrosse teams.
Students immediately became interested in the
idea, and their focus in other classes quickly
improved. The basketball team even won state
championships this year!
Another member of the center engaged us to
empower youth in the community. We started
with the nearby Hulse Juvenile Detention Center, which receives more than 300 minors per
year, all of whom are placed within the facility
for issues including chronic delinquency, serious
property crimes, as well as sex- and weaponrelated offenses. Many of the inmates suffer
from mental health issues, besides having special
education needs, coming from backgrounds
with severe family dysfunction. Starting in the
fall of 2013, Libertyville center volunteers have
been teaching weekly brain-based mindful yoga
classes to minors both in the detention center
and in a residential program called FACE-IT
(Family and Community Engaged in Treatment). At rst, it was very dicult to engage
these minors, particularly those in the detention
center facility.
Christina reected on her experience: They
are visibly anxious and having difficulty to
even close their eyes for breathing. I could see
how brain education and its broad range of
exercises and techniques can help anyone quiet
their mind even if it is just for a while. Some of
the boys who were extremely shy could open
up and focus well on the meditation. They
were able to express their experience through
drawing and writing in their journals. Working
with Susan Korpai, the superintendent of the
detention center, our Body & Brain volunteers
are preparing to provide a more intensive fourhour workshop that will teach eective tools for
physical and emotional grounding in an eort
of helping participants unleash their brains inner inspiration, all in hopes of creating a better
life for themselves.
For the last 18 months, another one of our
volunteers, Claudette A. Loiacono-Walker,
has been working weekly with children from
underserved populations in the community. As
a retired lawyer and long-time piano teacher,
she has a great anity and patience for working with children. When one of our members
mentioned a local shelter in need of a volunteer
to help young children and mothers, Claudette
was there for them. The shelter (which will not
be named to protect its condentiality) is for
families of domestic violence. It oers a refuge
to families for about six months, until moms
and their children are able to leave to begin
new lives. The ages of the children in a class are
between 3 and 11. The older ones learn to help
EDUCATION
All we have to do is unleash our own capacity and power to

overcome illness however it strikes. Our brain and
body have this technology built up inside.
the younger ones. These children are not used to
structure in their lives and are very apprehensive
about physical touch. The rst class we oered
was hands are not for hitting, to let the children know that hitting is not the only thing that
hands can do.
Claudette said: My class can best be described as playful mindfulness. My goal is to
help the children relax, to have fun and laugh, to
become aware of their bodies, to introduce them
to mindful movement and breathing, to allow
them to take leadership in the yoga class and to
stimulate their self-worth.
At the beginning of working with a new
group, it can be a challenge to get the participants to engage in exercises because of their past
trauma and living circumstances. However, as
the weeks pass on, they learn to trust and surrender into the activity just because they dont
want to miss out when the other kids are having
fun falling over or laughing. When I ask her

what motivates her most, Claudette responds:
Although my time is short with each child, I can
see little changes in them as they grow. I also see
myself growing and learning in my response to
them. I truly believe that in some small way their
hearts have been touched with light and as they
develop that light they will spread it to others.
Facilitating the volunteer work from the
Body & Brain training center for the various
groups within the surrounding community
is very natural and deeply meaningful to me.
What can be more signicant than increasing
overall awareness within ones community in an
eort of enabling a more sustainable living in
all physical and emotional aspects? The ultimate
goal of Libertyvilles Body & Brain center is
for us to grow and inspire each other through

completely aligning with our mission statement, whose objective is beneting humanity,
as widely as possible, and creating a better world
by awakening the potential of our brain and
body, and bringing to surface the best in the
human spirit.
More than anything, action in the community makes my heart sing and lls me with hope.
Science is just science, but when used to help,
science becomes energy, and energy becomes
spirit. And mental and physical diseases simply
melt away. What this experience has taught me
is that, when your mind connects with others,
we can make magic.
Combatting
Worldwide
Poverty
HOW NEUROSCIENTISTS CAN HELP

by James Sullivan
Since the days of the Great Recession

to Occupy Wall Street, from the crash
of markets in Europe to the latest cycle
of presidential campaigning in the
United States, poverty has been a hotly
discussed issue throughout the world,
with rhetoric getting much stronger
over the past decade. Particularly in the
United States, its no secret that theres
a growing gap between the wealthiest
citizens and the poorest, as the middle
class is gradually disappearing. While
the debate has been left up to economists and political analysts, some of
the eects of poverty may require more
than just a change in scal policy.
A study published last month in JAMA

Pediatrics suggests that living in poverty might
actually be quite expensive at least in terms of
health and development. In addition to the harrowing stress that comes along with being poor,
the eects may be more deep-rooted halting
brain development in children. Weve understood that those who are socioeconomically
underprivileged tend to do poorer in school,
but the reasons have long been attributed to
those well-o having access to school facilities
with larger budgets, smaller classroom sizes,
or parents who could aord private schools or
tutoring services, but the newest findings in
neuroscience suggest that up to 20 percent of
the gap between students from low- and highincome families could be attributed to brain
development.
Poverty has a pervasive inuence on a childs
health, says Dr. James M. Perrin, a professor
of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and
former president of the American Academy of
Pediatrics, who addressed the issue last year at
the Aspen Brain Forum. Every chronic disease
in children is both more common and worse
if you are poor, and treatment is less eective
if you are poor. It is absolutely critical that we
come together and develop ways to break the
cycle before another generation of children
grows into adulthood suering the long-term
impact of childhood poverty.
Perrin and his colleagues feel that the time
has come for doctors to stop being apathetic
toward economic issues that the evidence
shows a real reason to attack poverty as though
it were any other debilitating childhood disease.
The experiment demonstrating this was led by
psychologist Seth Pollak, from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, and included 389 healthy
children and adolescents as test subjects, with
participants ranging between 4 and 22 years of
age. They were given age-appropriate cognitive
skills tests and their results were matched with
MRIs that checked for gray matter in their temporal and frontal lobes.
Subjects from families in households living
below the U.S. federal poverty line had levels
of gray matter 8 to 10 percent lower than those
with normal brain development. There wasnt
enough correlation between gray matter when
it came to comparing children of middle-class
families and those of auent ones, suggesting
that although money hardly guarantees a better
outcome, a lack of financial resources clearly
has a negative eect. The reason I think were
not seeing a continuum is that humans are very
hardy, said Pollak about his study, I think the
human child can learn to accommodate quite a
wide variety of circumstances whats happening in extreme poverty is that were moving out
of the range where the human brain can cope.
Pollak hoped that the eects were only temporary but 22-year-olds still had the same
developmental issues as they had while growing

up. Researchers looked at other possibilities
such as being raised up within abusive homes,
which tend to be associated with poverty, but
even in children who were otherwise healthy,
this deciency was still observed. Joan Luby, a
psychiatrist from the Washington University
School of Medicine in Saint Louis, Mo., supports the ndings of Pollaks team, believing it
emphasizes an important roadmap to combating poverty worldwide.
In a developed country like the United States,
51 percent of students attending public schools
come from low-income families, according to
the National Center for Education Statistics
a large number who may be suering from
hindered brain development. For Pollak, the
next question his team intends to investigate
is what social policies are most beneficial to
children living below the poverty line. Hes also
not the rst person to have seen these unsettling
results either.
The journal Nature Neuroscience published
a pertinent study this spring, conducted on a
larger scale by neuroscientists Kimberly Noble,
of New York Citys Columbia University, and,
from the opposite coast, Elizabeth Sowell of
the Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles, both
GLOBAL
IT IS ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL THAT WE COME TOGETHER

AND DEVELOP WAYS TO BREAK THE CYCLE BEFORE
ANOTHER GENERATION OF CHILDREN GROWS
INTO ADULTHOOD SUFFERING THE LONG-TERM
IMPACT OF CHILDHOOD POVERTY.
of whom looked into the biological underpinnings related to poverty. Their eort spanned
several American cities scanning the brains
of 1,099 individuals as their controls and
included children, adolescents, as well as young
adults. Genetic ancestry was also factored in, to
account for variance in brain structures among
ethnic groups.
The lowest income bracket in the study
families earning below $25,000 showed 6
percent less surface area than the families that
earned over $150,000. The research was consistent with other studies, particularly one by
Martha Farah, a cognitive neuroscientist at the
University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Her
research concerned 44 African-American female
infants, roughly a month old, and coming
from a mixture of socioeconomic backgrounds
throughout Philadelphia. Even this early in
development, those from low-income milieus
evidence having smaller brains than the infants
from wealthier contexts.
Farah and her team presented the research
in March during a meeting of the Society for
Research in Child Development. Their work,
however, is far from over, still planning to follow the infants chosen for the study for an additional two years as only Pollaks study has
oered some insight into how children with an

economic disadvantage develop over time, and
not much of the existing literature explicitly
isolates the causes.
We do see a correlation in the numbers, but
what, if it can be ruled as a single cause, is responsible for this gap in the rst place? Among
the causes that Farah suspects is the degree of
interaction between parents and their children,
as this form of socialization increases the likelihood of infants being more regularly exposed to
language, allowing their brains to build as they
recognize and connect with new sounds. The
access to toys can also be a crucial factor particularly how stimulating the toys that theyre
given are for their developing brains. Farah
will also factor in regular visits to their home
environment.
Jamie Hanson, a psychologist at Duke University, has reckoned many of the researchers
sentiments as evidence that poverty indeed has
an adverse effect, which may make it all the
more dicult to eliminate through social policy
alone: These early life circumstances make it
tougher for many children and its on many of
us in society to make sure that children have
equal possibilities.
While the social implications of the work can
be signicant, and the precise causes remain to

be still seen, it would be far from the truth to
say that all is lost for those born into a lower-income bracket. While the damage shows signs of
persisting, this does not mean that it isnt reversible. To this end, a study in Mexico revealed that
supplements provided to the incomes of poor
farmers led to an improvement in the cognitive
skills of their children, in just a mere 18 months
all of which suggests that the focus might be
better placed on families in general rather than
just examining their children.
According to Hanson, we could be seeing another instance of environmental factors impacting DNA a problem that could arise even
before the children are born and intervention
into areas of nutrition and stress management
could go a long way in terms of breaking the
vicious cycle of poverty.
Fall 2015
WORKING
WELL
MANAGING WORK STRESS
by Temani F. Aldine
As great as your new job may be, its inevitable that at some point youll end
up experiencing the pressures of work-related stress the strains of deadlines,
having to work late, or being overworked are all elements that come with the new
reality, even for people who love what they do.
A 2013 Stress in the Workplace survey, conducted by the American Psychological Associations Center for Organizational Excellence, found that more than
one-third of working Americans reported chronic work stress. And 65 percent of
the respondents to their 2012 survey cited work as their top source of stress. This
is not surprising, especially considering that we tend to spend the majority of our
waking hours at work. Consequently, we often take work-related stress home,
along with that overdue project.
BUSINESS
Working Well contd
What is your
task? How
important
is it? And
how much
control do you
actually have
over the final
outcome?
Many studies have shown the

ways this can affect our mental
and physical health anxiety,
insomnia, high blood pressure, and
a weakened immune system, to
name a few. The damage is compounded by the detrimental ways
we deal with stress, such as overeating, binging on unhealthy foods,
along with overindulging in cigarettes, alcohol, or other drugs.
In their 1995 study on stress
and cognitive function, Dr. Bruce
McEwen and Dr. Robert Sapolsky,
Ph.D.s, found that some aspects
of the bodys response to stress
such as heightened sensory
awareness and mental acuity
can actually have benets for the
short term. Not all forms of stress
are necessarily bad either, with
eustress being the bodys response
to excitement or events like anticipating a party. The dierence
between good stress and bad stress,
however, relates to the duration of
the stress and how the individual
perceives it. Bad stressors tend
to be chronic, long-term, and
persistent, and lead to a more
destructive response having a
breakdown and turning into that
co-worker that everybody tries to
avoid. Each one of us has a bad
day, but when you nd out your
projects are becoming inescapable
thoughts even after theyre
completed it could be a symptom of high-volume workplace
stress. All of this of course has
much more to do with the nature
of the reaction to the stressor than
the stressor itself.
Work stress is inevitable, but it
doesnt have to run your life. We
can learn how to reduce chronic
stress and increase our overall sense
of health and well-being.
ACTIVATE THE
MIND-BODY CONNECTION
New research in brain functioning
allows us to understand how our
bodies react to various stressful
circumstances. This is also a benet
of mind-body practices like yoga,
tai chi, and qi gong. Knowledge is
power, and getting to know your
own patterns of responding to
stressors can help you take charge
of the stress in your work life.
What can you do? Breathe. One
thing that many practices have
in common is the importance of
breathing. We take it for granted.
It is something that all of us do,
but we dont do it consciously. In
your breathing lies the power to
change your perspective. Simple
acts like slowing down breathing
or counting your breaths can have
a calming and clarifying eect on
your mood.
From the awareness of your
breathing, you can shift to become more aware of your body.
The quickest way to develop this
awareness is to place your hands on
your lower abdomen. Then, check
in with different parts of your
body. Do you feel pain or tension
anywhere? Is there any change in
your bodys temperature? Even if
you do not sense what is going
on inside your body, the shift in
attention can aect your approach
in responding to outside stressors.
You will fare better at this if
you practice doing it before you
encounter the obstacles that make
your day stressful. Start by taking a
few minutes each day to focus on
your breathing, on walking, or just
by quietly enjoying your lunch.
Being able to focus purposefully
on a single activity is a skill that
develops with experience.
DONT UNDERESTIMATE
THE POWER OF ATTITUDE
In the workplace, you may experience pressure to meet a deadline or
to fulll a challenging obligation.
This is normal work life, but it
is stress. It can be good stress in
the short term. It can invigorate
you, or help you develop expertise,
or even force you to devise more
economical and ecient ways for
dealing with the tasks at hand.
However, when this work-related
stress is recurring or prolonged, it
can start to impact you in a negative way. In the long run, it can also
impact the way you deal with more
trivial problems. It would seem
that chronic stress, like beauty, is in
the eye of the beholder.
Job demands are the roots of
psychological stressors in the work
environment. However, something
that could easily become a source
of chronic stress can turn out to
be something temporary, followed
by the opportunity for recovery
and an adaptive response. Good
stress can work depending on how
you interpret and react to your
reality. What is your task? How
important is it? And how much
control do you actually have over
the nal outcome? Bearing in mind
these three questions and their
potential answers can make a
dierence.
According to Robert Karaseks
demand-control model of occupational stress, bad stress can result
from a combination of a sense of
high responsibility and low control. This has as much to do with
the prior experiences of the individual as it has to do with stressors
in ones current environment.
Your response to a stressful
event (both its source and signicance) is shaped by how you perceive it. Many stress-management
techniques feature a way to recognize the dierence between what
is and what is not within your
control. You must then identify
the extent to which your interpretations, beliefs, and judgments
about circumstances contribute to
your stress. Finally, you must learn
how to consciously adjust your reactions and perceptions in a more
empowering way so that you feel
less stressed.
There are many factors that contribute to work stress, and its unreasonable to think that you can
avoid them all. However, there are
ways to manage work-related stress
that can not only improve how you
experience your job, but also your
overall quality of life.
YOGA GOES TO WORK WITH
TRUCK DRIVERS
Workplace stress comes in many forms,
but most stress has physical manifestation. So, one of the most effective ways to
reduce bad stress at work is to incorporate
physical activity into your day. Last year, a
unique group of truck drivers at Lockheed
Martins, Sunnyvale, Calif., facility started
their mornings with the Body & Brain yoga
program. This resulted in a more positive
work engagement and fewer injuries.
Without special preparation or equipment, they quickly began to integrate
stretching and breathing exercises into
their daily routine. The group was led by
Patrick ODonnell a senior manager who
had discovered the Body & Brain yoga program while recovering from a serious inju-
ry. He got so much out of it that he himself

became an instructor. Because ODonnell
had worked on Lockheed Martins shipping
docks early in his career, he understood
the truck drivers work environment and
felt that his co-workers could benefit from
yoga techniques.
ODonnell said: I started it as an initiative to help prevent injuries. These guys
are getting older, and theyd go out in the
cold weather and twist the wrong way
and end up injured. I implemented yoga
to stretch them in the morning and help
them become more present-minded.
Theyve had wonderful results: According
to ODonnell, there were zero injuries in
the first six months of Truck Driver Yoga.
Fall 2015
SelfTranscending
Love
A CONVERSATION WITH DRS. PAUL
AND EVELYN MOSCHETTA
by Earl Meagan
Its fair to say that one doesnt have

to be married to realize how much hard
work marriage takes. With nearly half
of all marriages ending in divorces, it
makes one wonder if more people are
in love with the idea of being married
than they actually are with their partner. Its hardly a surprise that marriage
counseling has been such a thriving
business, despite the ongoing economic
hardship, and few have been in the
business for as long as Drs. Evelyn and
Paul Moschetta.
Their practice, based in Manhattans Midtown East, has ourished for over 40 years, and
their names are among the most recognizable
in the business, with accolades that include the
Marriage Counselor of the Year award, presented to them by the Long Island Association
for Marriage and Family Therapy. As a husbandand-wife team, together the Moschettas have
saved countless marriages, collaborated on three
books, and for many years contributed to an advice column in the Ladies Home Journal, titled
Can This Marriage Be Saved? with stories
and suggestions based on the problems of their
former clients who are proud of the progress
theyve made. In addition to being featured in
the press, they have also contributed articles
with their advice to the Hungton Post.
Is it all really just too much of a struggle to
maintain a marriage? Does it serve no other
purpose aside from being a perpetual contest
between two people with a marriage counselor
or therapist acting as a referee? The Moschettas
disagree, as their books assert. Their commitment to their job resides in the fact that a happy
marriage can be a continuous source of joy and
renewal, so long as couples are willing to work
out their dierences.
Their own marriage, 38 years strong, is testimony to this. When their book, The Marriage
Spirit, was released in 1998, a reviewer from
The New York Times was so impressed with
their way of speaking that she likened it to a
well-orchestrated musical duet. Each takes a
thoughtful pause to listen to the other as they
speak, perfectly complementing one another.
Indeed, when I spoke with them over the phone,
I can attest that this harmony certainly remains
true. Few people have evidenced the same level
of success in their personal lives and business
endeavors as the Moschettas have over the years.
One could even go so far as to say that they
were destined to do this in tandem. They both
met while completing postgraduate studies in
psychology as Yeshiva University. Together, they
continued their studies at the American Academy of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and
later on at the Alfred Adler Institute. Both had
been through dicult marriages when they were
younger (their current partnership being their
second marriage), and it was while finishing
their studies in psychotherapy that they became
the go-to experts for all of their friends struggling with relationship problems.
Their practice is closely based on Maslows
famous hierarchy of human needs, a crucial part
of humanist psychology: Basic physical needs
such as food and shelter ranking at the bottom
of the list, while self-actualization, nestled right
at the top, is needed for people to realize their
full potential as human beings. Among those
considered to be self-actualized capable of
pursuing their lifes dreams instances of
neuroses are rare. At the time the Moschettas
were starting, there was little research in the

existing literature about successful marriages, or
the functionality of a successful marriage. Terms
pertaining to these states were rarely dened,
and so they had to set about creating a denition for happy and successful marriages, while
doing an extensive survey of people across the
country who were happy.
The more research the Moschettas conducted, the more they saw the possibility of someone
achieving self-actualization through mastering a
successful marriage a goal entailing stepping
outside of the comforts of the ego and nding
the support needed in reaching ones potential,
all the while satisfying the need for loving and
being loved. Both Evelyn and Paul found each
other after unsuccessful rst marriages and
the goal is far from an easy one.
In fact, recent research suggests that biologically, people were hardly meant to be monogamous. After all, we fall into the minority only
9 percent of animal species are known to share
breeding grounds for longer than one season.
Like our primate ancestors, and even our closest
living relatives, the chimpanzees, humans are
thought to have originated as a largely polyamorous species.
Looking at prehistoric cultures, youll likely
nd that tribal chieftains took several wives at
a time, a practice that in some places continues
to this day. Queens in ancient Egypt (and much
of the Nile Valley) were also known to entertain
several lovers at a time. In fact, only something
like 17 percent of human cultures today place a
strict emphasis on monogamy.
How monogamy came up in evolution (just
a short 3.5 million years ago) seems unclear, but
unlike chimps, humans form bonds with each
other, even in instances of polyamory. A leading
hypothesis is that while polygamy would provide the most opportunities for reproduction, in
the case of animals like the golden lion tamarin,
monogamous arrangements are able to boost
the odds of their ospring surviving until maturity, provided that both parents stick around to
help raise their young.
Throughout evolution, this type of companionship may have offered us something more
advantageous. After all, humans are by nature
social animals, and in their various pursuits
depend on vast networks of people this being
one reason for which our brains are so much
larger than even those of our closest relatives. In
the generations before we arrived on the scene,
the reason for monogamy probably became socially ingrained a type of modeling behavior
wherein hominids, like our ancestor the Australopithecus, realized that members of the tribe
who mated for life lived longer and were happier.
Much has happened since then even in the
four short decades that the Moschettas have had
their practice: Were acknowledging traditional
marriage counseling, but were also adding an-
BUSINESS
other perspective to enrich what most people are

doing, says Paul, who notably has also looked
to the goals of Eastern philosophy and its ideas
about the self to supplement his practice.
The key is to nd the mechanism of the attachment bond. As he likes to say, The current
of unselfish love flows through every strong,
healthy marriage. One of their recent success
stories involves a man who after 20 years of
marriage had an aair. However, after several
months of counseling sessions with the Moschettas, the trust between the couple was rebuilt
something that was achieved only after the
husband made himself completely open and
available, letting his wife see his email, phone,
and Internet history. Six months later, they paid
the Moschettas a visit, sharing the good news
that their marriage has never been stronger.
All too often, the problems that Evelyn and
Paul see are what Evelyn refers to as roommate marriage, in which the careers and family
responsibilities of the couple in question take
center priority, and when all is said and done,
spouses end up being merely people that live together. The rst thing a couple should do when
they get home is embrace and kiss appreciating the time that they have together and having
had made it through the day. If they dont have
this moment, however brief it may be, one immediately proceeds to daily tasks like opening
the mail, and as such youre likely to ght over
things like the bills and so forth.
Their services and guidance are of course
hardly limited to married couples. Theyve also
regularly seen same-sex couples as well as a
number of clients in long-term relationships,
in increasing numbers, all to whom their advice
often applies equally. Among other welcomed
changes, they recall that when the practice
started it was more often women who made the
rst call in recent years, its typically been the
men who call rst, taking the initiative in healing their relationships.
Most importantly, the Moschettas sum up

their therapy in this way: Its easy to get lost in
the moment to become irritated with whatever it is your partner is doing. In that instance,
your brain forms an image of your partner, different from the one you know so the key is to
lose the new mental image, to not let it skew the
way you see your signicant other. Instead, try
to focus on what it is you like about them the
wonderful person that youre continuously nding new things about. The best way to keep your
relationship going strong, is to keep it alive.
Fall 2015
LIMITLESS
POSSIBILITIES
BRAIN-BOOSTING DRUG CHANGES LIVES IN NEW TV SERIES
by Gerri Miller
Imagine if you could instantly and eortlessly access all of

your brain cells, every memory and experience youve ever
had, just by taking a pill. Thats the intriguing premise of the
2011 movie Limitless, and its television adaptation coming
to CBS this fall. The features original star, Bradley Cooper,
who remains involved as an executive producer (and appears
in the premiere episode and may recur), will be taken over
by Jake McDorman, who will be playing the central role of
Brian Finch, a protagonist whose intelligence quotient rises
stratospherically when he takes the illegal drug NZT.
Hes down on his luck and has reached that point in life where all the
dreams he thought would come to fruition dont, and he feels he has nothing to lose by taking this drug, executive producer Alex Kurtzman sets
the scene. It gives you total recall of everything that has happened to you,
including memories of what it was like to be in the womb before you were
born and even things you werent paying attention to, and you can call
upon all of that. But there are major downsides. Like any drug, when you
stop taking it you go through withdrawal, and there are tremendous

side eects. Most people that take it
get sick and die. Theres a big risk,
continues Kurtzman. There is an
antidote, but no one knows what
the long-term repercussions are. He
has only the benets, but how long
will that last?
Meanwhile, the murder of a
friend puts Finch on the FBIs
radar, and realizing his value as
an asset, the Feds get him to work
for them. It puts him in compromising positions that are going
to test him. Hes thrown into it.
Hes a total sh out of water, says
Kurtzman, who believes audiences
will empathize with him, while
enjoying the what-if aspect of the
plot. Its a bit of a make-believe
wish fulllment thing, but its always couched in a way that makes
it credible and believable and
grounded in an emotional reality.
The ethical dilemmas will be
food for thought as well. One of
the core questions is what makes
you, you? And how much of yourself do you end up compromising and giving away by allowing
yourself to take this drug? posits
Kurtzman. On the drug, you
might do great good, but at what
personal cost?
While hes relishing the role,
Jake McDorman would himself
hesitate to take a drug like NZT,
if it ever existed. The drug will
change your life, he acknowledges. But the side eects could
be fatal.
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Book
Roundup
Worrying: A Literary
and Cultural History
By Francis OGorman
(Bloomsbury, 2015)
When I first opened the pages, it
took me a while to determine what
exactly it was that I was reading. A
self-help manual? Not exactly. A book
about depression? In a way. A popular
science book? Almost. An ethnography? Theres some of that, too. Let it be
said that this wasnt exactly a deterrent actually, it proved OGormans
point rather well, mainly, that worry
is a rather hard concept to pin down.
In recent years, its been somewhat
in vogue to write about disease and
epidemics, as though they were the
protagonists, or at least a great narrative thread. As horrific as the Black
Death pandemic was, it revealed something about the precarious nature of
being human, and its presence can be
felt through much of the literary and
artistic sphere of the late Middle Ages.
The concept of worry is a bit different, and slightly more elusive. Its
one of the rare words that doesnt
really translate outside of the English
language, nor do there really seem to be
any synonyms for it. The Oxford English
Dictionary gives the Old English verb
wyrgan as its origin word, meaning
to seize, or to cause fear safe to
say that the word has evolved to other
connotations since then. It does not
necessarily mean the same thing as
being anxious a state wherein whatever it is you happen to be concerned
about is usually on the verge of happening, and its definitely not the same
as depression, as both can be defined
as states of being, whereas worry is by
turns a noun and a verb. Its definitely
something that frequently occupies
our minds, but is despite this somewhat
hard to delineate. The size of the worry,
which varies from person to person, is
an object of curiosity, too. Theres wor-
rying about leaving your plane tickets

at home, and worrying while waiting for
results on a cancer test yet the same
verb describes both scenarios.
The word actually didnt reach its
present meaning until the Victorian era,
yet the feeling seems to have been with
us from the very beginning didnt our
ancestors worry from time to time that
predators might be hiding in the grass,
or later, when they had trouble sleeping
on the night leading up to a battle?
Therefore, OGorman has to become
somewhat of a forensic historian to try
and find the connotations that would
mean the same thing one possibility comes from the Good News Bible
translation, within the Book of Kings:
heavy and displeased. Going further
in the present, the escalating tensions
throughout Europe in the years between
World War I and II have been described
as times when worry was the disease
of the age.
Worry isnt a psychological disorder
if anything, it represents what is
going through the minds of otherwise
normal people. In fact, its merely part
of what makes us human to go about
our day and worry over whether weve
left our doors locked, and then go back
to double-check this only to start wondering if we remembered to turn off
the stove. In his own words, OGorman
seeks to bring this perennial issue to
light, to see worry as it really is, and
open the discussion on what for many
people can be an embarrassing aspect
of life. Not necessarily in an attempt of
curing it, but to simply understand why
it occurs so often, how it can be used as
a common ground among people who
are afraid to talk about it, and how it
may even be beneficial that is, how
its ubiquity may serve as a pretext for
further connecting us with our fellow
human beings.
James Sullivan
No Sweat: How the Simple

Science of Motivation
Can Bring You a Lifetime
of Fitness
By Michelle Segar, Ph.D.
(Amacom, 2015)
As crucial as exercise is for both
mental and physical well-being, we
tend to write it off as just some sort
of chore that needs to be done, once
were finished with work, or when we
finally have enough time to go to the
gym. It becomes more of a reminder of
Thats important, Ill focus on it later
rather than being something that we
attempt to incorporate into our day
without forcefully setting time aside
for it. Such would be the approach of Dr.
Michelle Segar, chair of the U.S. National
Physical Activity Plans Communications
Committee. Segar asserts that even
non-vigorous movement can make a
big impact on our health and physical
appearance that merely being active
during the day can add up significantly.
While many people who are serious
about losing weight and getting in shape
tend to look to an expert to design a
plan for them, Segar instead places an
emphasis on finding the physical activity you most enjoy doing whether its
bicycling, playing tennis, swimming, or
focusing more on aerobic exercises.
She believes in taking a 360-degree perspective, and that the system should be
physically and emotionally rewarding in
its own right, rather than driving toward
an unreachable goal. Why kill yourself
to look like a fitness model when you
could instead be making every moment
matter?
Her plan consists of four core principles or MAPS:
Meaning: Instead of concentrating on
what you should do, make a list of the
right reasons for regularly engaging in
exercise and healthy living.
Awareness: Take note of the physical
activity your day consists of already
perhaps change things in your routine

like taking stairs rather than an elevator,
or consider walking instead of taking
the subway.
Permission: Make your self-care
needs a priority, and take advantage
of movement to lift positive emotions
and thoughts.
Strategy: Your exercise plan is going
to run into some roadblocks youll
have a friend who wants to go out for
drinks, youll probably end up having
to work late at least one day this week,
etc. While consistency is important,
it doesnt mean you have to say no to
everything. Calmly negotiate how to
compromise and change your plan to
adapt to these changes as they come.
A lot of these seem like common
sense, but considering that more and
more people work jobs that are largely
sedentary sitting behind a computer
and so forth Segars book offers
a wealth of advice for how you can
rebound against this unhealthy trend:
Office Sprints: Rather than sitting,
try standing and working every once in a
while you might even want to consider
getting a slow treadmill for when youre
at your desk, or take the stairs and walk
around whenever you need a break.
Cleaning Calisthenics: Routine
household chores provide more exercise than you think just the practice
of pushing around a vacuum can burn
some calories. You might want to try
things like carrying smaller loads of
laundry at a time, making you go back
and forth on multiple trips to the laundry room especially beneficial if you
have stairs.
The Leisurely Stroll: This is particularly great if you happen to live in the
city, or even simply know of a nice
downtown area. Rather than sitting in
a cafe when meeting a friend, why not
take your tea or coffee to go, and take a
relaxing walk around the block, particularly on a day with beautiful weather?
Earl Meagan
Spring 2015
Wellness
by Jeremy Fuscaldo
SUBSCRIBE TO
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October
FALL 2015
September 29 - October 3
Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., USA
Neurobiology of Drosophilia
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Events
Riga
September 30 - October 2
Bordeaux, France
GliSyn: Astrocytes and Microglia,
Key Partners in Synaptic Transmission
International Bordeaux Neurocampus
1-3
Singapore, Singapore
Regional Congress of the World
Federation for Mental Health
World Federation for Mental
Health
1-6
Erice, Italy
Stress, Behavior and The Heart
Ettore Majorana Foundation and
Centre for Scientific Culture
3-6
Quebec City, Canada
4th International Frontiers in
Neurophotonics Symposium
Universite Laval and Universite
de Bordeaux
Thessaloniki
4-8
Izmir, Turkey
43rd Annual Meeting of the International Society for Pediatric
Neurosurgery
International Society for Pediatric
Neurosurgery
5-6
Jersey City, N.J., USA
16th International Conference on
Alzheimers Drug Discovery
Alzheimers Drug Discovery Foundation
Honolulu
7-10
Thessaloniki, Greece
FENS Featured Regional Meeting
2015
Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and The Hellenic,
Israel and Serbian Societies for
Neuroscience
8-11
Cagliari, Italy
16th Congress of the Italian Society of Neuroscience
Italian Society of Neuroscience
9-10
Riverside, Calif., USA
Fall Global Psychology Symposium 2015
University of Riverside School of
Health and Human Services
11-14
Copenhagen, Denmark
The Neurobiology of Sleep and
Circadian Rhythm
Federation of European Neuroscience Societies
13-16
Berlin, Germany
2015 IPA International Conference
International Psychogeriatric
Association
14-16
Jerusalem, Israel
10th International Congress of the
International Neuropsychiatric
Association
International Neuropsychiatric
Association
15-16
Chicago, USA
25th Neuropharmacology Conference
Elsevier
17-21
Chicago, USA
Neuroscience 2015
Society for Neuroscience
21-23
Riga, Latvia
4th European Conference on Mental Health
Evipro
22-23
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
3rd Middle East & North Africa
Stroke Conference
Conf Med
23
Brussels, Belgium
Investigation of Resting State
Functional Connectivity with MEG:
From Theory to Clinical Applications
European MEG Society
Singapore
23-24
Los Angeles, USA
A Critical Moment: Sex/Gender
Research at the Intersection of
Culture, Brain, & Behavior
FPR-UCLA
26-27
Bangkok, Thailand
3rd Annual International Conference on Neuroscience and Neurobiology Research
Global Science and Technology
Forum
26-30
Suzhou, China
Biological Rhythms
Cold Spring Harbor Asia Conferences
28-31
Honolulu, USA
AANEM Annual Meeting
American Association of Neuromuscular & Electrodiagnostic
Medicine
29-30
Bern, Switzerland
Endocannabinoid Pharmacology
Meeting
University of Bern
October 30 - November 2
Aguascalientes, Mexico
Social Psychology Conference
Praxeologica
Istanbul, Turkey
7th World Congress of the World
Sleep Federation
World Sleep Federation
Santiago, Chile
22nd World Congress of Neurology
Kenes International
November
1-4
Ashburn, Va., USA
Emerging Tools for Acquisition
and Interpretation of Whole-Brain
Functional Data
Janelia Research Campus, HHMI
4-7
Austin, USA
NAN Annual Conference
National Academy of Neuropsychology
4-7
Hammamet, Tunisia
Cem15 International Congress on
Cognition, Emotion, Motivation
Universite de Tunis Department
of Psychology
5-7
Vietri sul Mare, Italy
5th International Conference on
Cognitive Infocommunications
IEEE
6-7
Barcelona, Spain
3rd International Spinal Cord Repair Meeting
Step by Step Foundation
7-8
Cambridge, Mass., USA
36th Annual Neurorehabilitation
Conference on Traumatic Brain
Injury, Stroke and Other Neurologic Disorders
Braintree Rehabilitation Hospital
8-11
Ashburn, Va., USA
Hippocampal-Entorhinal Complexities: Maps, Cell Types and
Mechanisms
11-14
New Orleans, USA
Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine 2015 Annual Meeting
Academy of Psychosomatic
Medicine
12-15
Orlando, Fla., USA
NEI Psychopharmacology Congress
Neuroscience Education Institute
15-18
Ashburn, Va., USA
Mammalian Circuits Underlying
Somatosensation
16-17
Bristol, U.K.
Colston Research Society Symposium: New Developments in PTSD
Research and Treatment
University of Bristol
December
2-5
Cancun, Mexico
2nd Zing Neurodegeneration
Conference
Zing Conferences
3-5
Coral Gables, Fla., USA
Annual Miami Neuro Symposium
and 3rd Annual Miami Neuro
Nursing Symposium
Baptist Health South Florida Neuroscience Center
3-5
Las Vegas, USA
Psychiatry Update Encore Presentation
American Academy of Clinical
Psychiatrists, Current Psychiatry,
and Global Academy for Medical
Education
17-20
Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., USA
Behavior & Neurogenetics of
Nonhuman Primates
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
5
Vilnius, Lithuania
6th Conference of Lithuanian
Neuroscience Association
Lithuanian Neuroscience Association
19-21
Madrid, Spain
1st International Congress of Clinical Psychology with Children and
Adolescents
Aitana Research
6-13
Fort Lauderdale, Fla., USA
Psychotherapy, Psychiatry and
Counseling in the Digital Age
Eastern Caribbean Cruise
Continuing Education, Inc.
November 29 - December 4
Cambridge, U.K.
Molecular Neurodegeneration
Wellcome Trust
7-9
Strasbourg, France
From Maps to Circuits: Models
and Mechanisms for Generating
Neural Connections
Wellcome Trust, et al
14-17
Queensland, Australia
Systems and Computational Neuroscience Down Under
Queensland Brain Institute
Fall 2015
THE LAST WORD
The Brain
Fights Back
by Laila Bramwell Yasin, Esq.
I never once asked, Why me? Instead, I say, Better me than someone
else. Every year more than 795,000
Americans have a stroke and 130,000
of them will die from it, according
to the American Stroke Association.
Thats one American who dies from
stroke every four minutes.
I taught law at Harvard when I had the rst
of what would be seven separate brain surgeries
to remove recurrent tumors and three strokes.
One paralyzed me from the neck down for a
time. The fact that I am writing this is not only
miraculous, but it shows how the brain, even
when under attack, ghts back.
The American Brain Tumor Association
says nearly 70,000 new cases of primary brain
tumors will be diagnosed this year and nearly
14,000 people will lose their battle. There are
more than 120 dierent types of brain tumors,
and meningiomas are the most common. Ninety-two percent are benign. The rest are either
atypical or malignant, like mine is.
I see setbacks as challenges. I even saw the initial brain tumor as a blessing to the extent that
it was found before it killed me. It was operable
and it was a one-time occurrence, supposedly. I
saw subsequent recurrences as new obstacles to
overcome.
Even with advances in technology, not much

is known about the exact cause for meningiomas. It was thought they could be passed down
genetically, but no one in my family had ever
had one before. It is thought that persons who
suer traumatic brain injury through war, domestic violence, or car accidents are also at risk.
I looked into the possibility that the batteries
in the headphones that I wore while running
were passing a current through my head. I meticulously checked the location and contents of
state and federal toxic waste sites, against cancer
and brain tumor statistics in my area, and made
a grid of the results but there was no correlation.
I did not use a microwave nor a cell phone. I ate
mostly organic foods, drank ltered water, and
hardly used plastic containers or wrap, so I ruled
out pesticides, preservatives, and plastic carcinogens. I examined my life for unforgiven or unresolved traumas and forgave others and myself.
The game changer was when I read about
Dr. Judah Folkmans research on angiogenesis,
or the formation of new blood vessels. In 1971,
Folkman reasoned that by cutting o the blood
supply to tumors, a cancer could be starved into
remission. Tumors give o chemical signals that
stimulate new blood vessels to feed growing
tumors with oxygen and nutrients, like copper,
allowing the cancer cells to form new colonies
or metastases. By the early 1990s, the American
Cancer Society endorsed anti-angiogenesis therapy and tested synthetic drugs in clinical trials.
I decided to try to starve my tumors through
this new, aggressive therapy. My doctors shrugged
and said it was worth a try. I had my blood tested
for C-reactive protein to measure the level of inammation in my body and for ceruloplasmin,
a copper-carrying protein, so that I would have
enough empirical data. I squeezed every possible
milligram of copper from my food, drinking
and bathing water. I stopped eating chicken
livers, avocados, most shellsh, as well as beer
and chocolate. I switched from drinking ltered
or sparkling mineral water to distilled water. I
installed a carbon lter in my shower head.
My subsequent MRIs have shown no new tumor recurrences. My blood test results show decreases in inammation and copper. My doctors
said to keep doing whatever I was doing. And I
have. So far, the body has been ghting back,
and each day signies another battle won.
Laila Bramwell Yasin graduated from Vassar
College and Boston College Law School, taught at
Harvard Law School, and is a legal consultant in
Boston while writing her memoir, New Normal:
Its Not the Setback, Its the Get Back.
Iff y
you
choose,
it will
happen
We need your support to help Laura be

a role model for many others in El Salvador
In 2011, Laura was one of our students when we implemented brain education in El Salvador. Her
changes were transformational and she made her mind to create a better life for herself and her
child. Despite many odds in 2012-2014, including the loss of her mom, Laura worked hard to finish
her school and get ready for college. Currently she is also taking care of her baby, her grandmother
and her sister with a small job selling candy in her community. Due to these circumstances, she does
not have the means to pay for her college years.
With a vision to create a better world and to initiate significant changes in the lives of young girls
like Laura, our project Send Laura to College will fundraise to provide for her study and living costs
during her 5 years of university in San Salvador.
Total Funding Goal: $20,000

To know more about her story or to DONATE: https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/send-laura-to-college/
IBRE A
International Brain Education Association
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Brain World Fall 2015

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ISSUE 1 VOLUME 7 FALL 2015 $6.99 US/$8.99 CAN

HUMANITYS NEW FRONTIER

LEARNING & the BRAIN

THE SCIENCE OF CHARACTER:

USING BRAIN SCIENCE TO PROMOTE

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Four Surprising Ways to Increase Your Life Expectancy

Six Ways You Can Beat Winter Time Depression

Seven Tips on Healthy Living

The Science of Love Addiction

Curing the Mind through the Gut

A Brief History of Wellness and the Brain

26 Yoga and its Eects on the Parasympathetic

The Transposed Mind: How Self-Aware Are We?

Uncovering the Epidemic of Traumatic Brain

Ancient Eastern Medicine and the Brain

Tunnel of Light: Making Sense of Near-Death

Understanding the Master Gland

Neuroscience and Community

How Neuroscientists Can Help Poverty

Managing Work Stress

Couple Therapy by the Moschettas:

TV: Limitless Possibilities

Calendar of Brain-Related Events

The Last Word

Persevering Through Hardship

BrainWorld Fall 2015

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ife expectancies of average Americans have reached

3. Adopt a pet: According to The Atlantic, People with pets enjoy

FOUR SURPRISING WAYS TO INCREASE

4. Throw away your TV: I never believed my parents warnings

SIX WAYS YOU CAN BEAT WINTERTIME DEPRESSION

Get a good nights sleep: This one may seem

Exercise can make a difference: While you

Maintain a schedule: In addition to keeping regular bedtime hours, try to organize

Travel: This seems like a tall order but

live well, feel well

2. TAKE CARE OF YOUR SPINE: Any and

3. PRACTICE PROPER BREATHING:

Joshua Goldenberg, ND (2013)

THE SCIENCE OF LOVE ADDICTION

Have you ever stayed in a bad relationship or repeatedly

this ancient brain pathway that

When that rush of dopamine

You just crave this person.

WHAT STOPS ADDICTIVE

Knowing why the brain does what

Many cultures recognize the importance of gut

The gastrointestinal tract contains

Many inflammatory disorders

Everyone is born with a pristine

Over the next 10 years, scientists